VCU news

By Leila Ugincius

To Myron Helfgott, success means having a good idea. 

By that measure, the retired sculpture professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts has reached the pinnacle of success. Each of the pieces he’s created over the past 45 years has started with an idea or question. The desire to learn something was always the driving force.

“I’m not that good about talking about the work,” Helfgott said. “I know about the approach to the work, and that stays the same because I’m not producing something. I’m trying to find out something and the work is the means to find something out. So I get done and I’ve learned something, but whether it’s a decent work, I have no idea. That’s less important actually. What’s more important is I’m better equipped to start the next investigation.”

But, he adds in his self-deprecating way, since most ideas are actually pretty crummy, a lot of his pieces end up bound for the dumpster.

Thankfully, there have been many good ideas resulting in some fascinating works. More than 50 of those works, including several room-size installations, fill all three floors of the Anderson Gallery, where “Myron Helfgott: An Inventory of My Thoughts” is on display through March 8. Additionally, Helfgott present a book signing and small gallery talk on Thursday, Feb. 26, from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Helfgott worked with Ashley Kistler, gallery director, for the past two years to curate the exhibition.  

“A retrospective, which is a very particular type of show and has its own complexities for sure, that’s a project that really evolved incrementally over time,” Kistler said. “There was so much work in Myron’s studio and storage areas to choose from and that winnowing process took place over months.”

Helfgott’s works are so numerous, that he hasn’t seen some of his own pieces — including “Detail,” the first piece one sees when entering the gallery — in 25 years.

“This is a shock to see that thing,” he said.

The selection involved pragmatic concerns, such as the exhibition space and how the pieces would be divided up among the galleries. For Helfgott, there were decisive works he wanted in the show.

“There are a few things that are crucial and one of the ones up on the top floor, the title is ‘Two Beautiful Women in the Luxembourg Gardens’ and the reason I think that’s important is there used to be a poet on the campus here ... and I asked him if he would write the text for this piece, and that was terrific.”

The exhibition presented an unusual challenge for a retrospective representing such a long period of time. While logically the works would be organized chronologically, “Inventory” is organized thematically. So an early work from the 1970s may be next to one of Helfgott’s most recent pieces.

“It kind of looks like a group show because of the inconsistency of all the things,” Helfgott said. “But I’m very pleased with having tried so many different things.”

“Having said all that, there is a thematic consistency,” Kistler said, “and I think that becomes apparent with the way the show is hung, where you have works from different periods within the same space, and they’re speaking to some of the concerns and themes.”

 

Published by the Anderson Gallery, and funded by generous contributions from individuals and the dean’s office in the School of the Arts, a fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. It includes a foreword by Joe Seipel, dean of the School of the Arts; essays by Kistler and VCU Professor Emeritus of Art History Howard Risatti; a story by fiction writer and critic Dinah Ryan; a comprehensive biography by Gallery Coordinator Traci Garland; and additional contributions from sculptors Elizabeth King and Lester Van Winkle, editor Mary Flinn and poet Elizabeth Seydel Morgan.

 

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