Category Archives: current exhibit

2023, art front, current exhibit, featured

Anila Quayyum Agha: Flourishing Patterns

June 23 – September 24, 2023  

Anila Quayyum Agha is a Pakistani-American artist best known for her large-scale installations of elaborate, laser cut cubes. Suspended from above as though floating, and lit from within, the cubes cast lace-like, floor-to-ceiling shadows that completely transform the surrounding environment, flooding the space with allusions to the sacred geometric designs that developed across cultures and religions – especially those found in Islamic tradition and the richly ornamented public spaces, like Mosques, where Agha was excluded from as a female growing up in Lahore, Pakistan. Agha also creates wall-mounted sculptural works and drawings in which she employs embroidery, beads, and light to transcend the flat, two-dimensional plane on which she works.

Anila Quayyum Agha is organized by the Mennello Museum of American Art and curated by Katherine Page, Curator of Art and Education, Mennello Museum of American Art.

Mennello Museum of American Art and its exhibitions are generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of the Mennello Museum of American Art.  Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.  Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.

Anila Quayyum Agha, Crossing Boundaries – Nuvo Red, n.d. Laser-cut lacquered steel and halogen bulb; Edition: 1/3. 48 x 48 x 48 inches. Courtesy of Anila Quayuum Agha and Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Photography Jim Hobart MacBeth Studio

current exhibit, event

Alice Aycock: Waltzing Matilda and Twin Vortexes

Grounds for Exhibitions − Inaugural Outdoor Exhibitions Series
On view since September 2016

The Mennello Museum inaugurates Grounds for Exhibitions with two large-scale works by American sculptor Alice Aycock installed in the Marilyn L. Mennello Sculpture Garden. The beautiful works, Waltzing Matilda and Twin Vortexes were originally part of a series of seven sculptures in Aycock’s significant outdoor exhibition on Park Avenue in Manhattan entitled Park Avenue Paper Chase. Grounds for Exhibition features year-long large-scale sculpture exhibitions by nationally renowned American artists who otherwise would not be shared with Orlando audiences.

Shannon Fitzgerald states: “It is thrilling to inaugurate this outdoor exhibition program with such beautiful work by Alice Aycock, one of America’s most recognized and respected sculptors of her generation. I think visitors will delight in experiencing the stunning sculptures nestled in our lakeside landscape that challenges perspective, materiality, whimsy, and nature—in all its power and fragility.  She continues: “This is an extraordinary opportunity for our community to contemplate the vital role art has and the impact it can have when shared in the Public realm.”