Portfolio (REmancipation)

Renowned contemporary artist Sanford Biggers has launched an innovative collaboration with the Chazen Museum of Art focused on creating a response to an historic work of art in the Chazen’s permanent collection that has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years.

The week of July 12. Biggers, MASK Consortium and Chazen staff worked to research and scan the Ball sculpture and about two dozen other objects in the Chazen collection and plan other elements of the project. The Chazen’s prep staff set up a studio in the Elvehjem Building’s Mayer Gallery and MASK Consortium members scanned permanent-collection objects selected by Biggers using hand-held 3-D scanners that feed data into a program that creates an exact representation of the object on the computer screen. The team also used a stationary scanner to document museum spaces including the Rowland Gallery, and Gallery IV, where Emancipation Group has been on view.

[credit: text excerpted from UW Weekly]

• Virtual Gallery Tours of Gallery IV The Chazen Museum of Arts, featuring the Thomas Ball “Emancipation Group”
• An Interactive 3D Model of The Monument
  https://qrstud.io/emancipationgroup3d
• Critical input from the public about the Monument
• Resources to understand the Iconography in the sculpture, and the political and economic forces they represent
• A study of the editions (versions) of the monument and the changes implemented until the installation of the public bronze in Washington, D.C.