orensanz summer museum ACTIVITIES

August 8th - 4pmMUSIC PERFORMANCE

Angel Orensanz and Ilya Repin: from the Bay of Finland to the Bay of New York

This coming August 8th, the Russian Academy of Arts will open in Repino, an enclave north of St. Petersburg, Russia, a dynamic and colorful exhibition “Sails of Hope” made of 20 fabric sculptures of American-Spanish sculptor Angel Orensanz. “Sails of Hope” is curated by Tatiana Borodina, director of the Repin Studio-Museum, an expert on the work of Angel Orensanz. Recently, she introduced an exhibition of Angel Orensanz, titled “Weightlessness”, at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (January- March, 2009) both to the Russian public and to the Russian media.

The painter Ilya Repin, born in 1844, lived and worked in Kuokkola later named Repino in his honor. Repin captured like no other painter the strength, degradation and communal destiny of the Russian people during the most turbulent periods of Russian history. He retired to Kuokkola, a Finnish territory at that time, right outside of St. Petersburg, over the Harbor of Finland. It is there that he built his studio that is now a museum and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This collection of 20 fabric sculpture pieces of Angel Orensanz operate like a symphony of movement and color and has already created a stir in the Saint Petersburg metropolitan area. Orensanz’s work is well known in Saint Petersburg through a show at the Peter and Paul Fortress (2003), exhibitions at the Rumiantzev Palace “Earth, Death, Birth”, the Alexander Pushkin Museum, Moscow (2005) and “Sails of Departure – Sails of Arrival” at the State Russian Museum (2006). Angel Orensanz was made a member of the Russian Academy of Arts this past January.

On the day of the Orensanz opening in Repino, Russia this August 8th, there will be a tribute to Ilya Repin 20,000 miles away, in Governors Island, in the Harbor of New York. It will take place at the “Orensanz Summer Museum”, a three-months exhibition of the work of Angel Orensanz, in cooperation with the Governors Island Cultural and Educational Authority, that opens every weekend throughout the entire Summer to tens-of-thousands of New Yorkers. A free ferry from Lower Manhattan takes them to the center of the Harbor to an island bursting with free culture and entertainment events.

The Orensanz Summer Museum presents a large series of his drawings and light relief boxes. Every weekends House #11 (Orensanz Summer Museum) offers concerts, lectures, workshops and short plays to hundreds of visitors by artists and scholars from Columbia University, the Lower East Side and Williamsburg.

On Saturday, August 8th, the Orensanz Summer Museum will play music of Mussorgsky and Alexander Glazunov, especially the Oriental Rapsody, Opus 29 over the Harbor of New York as homage to Ilya Repin. The house where the Orensanz collection is exhibited has some coincidental resemblance with the Repin Museum. There is a monumental elm tree in which a three-fabric sculpture piece hangs (from the same collection exhibited now in Repino), protected by a large two-headed serpent in fabric protecting the Harbor of New York.

For more information about the schedule and program please visit our website or call (212) 529-7194. Consult ferry schedule to plan your trip.

Repin Studio Museum in Russia

The Orensanz Summer Museum in New York.