Moving Vision: Op and Kinetic Art from the Sixties and Seventies

Organized by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Moving Vision: Op and Kinetic Art from the Sixties and Seventies highlights one of the great strengths of the Museum’s permanent collection–OKCMOA’s extensive, high-quality holdings in Op (optical) and Kinetic (movement) art. This groundbreaking new exhibition, which also includes many historically significant loans from private collections, features movement, both real and perceived.

Beginning around the middle of the twentieth century, two separate yet complementary art movements brought something new to plastic, two and three-dimensional forms. In the case of Op art, artists created the perception of movement on a two-dimensional surface; while with Kinetic art, artists experimented with moving three-dimensional forms. This exhibition brings together these two movements to tell the story of artists’ explorations of motion in the 1960s and 70s.

Moving Vision will bring together approximately forty works centered around the Museum’s own masterpieces of Op and Kinetic Art, alongside a series of loans from major private collections. The exhibition will feature all the great names in Op and Kinetic Art—from Alexander Calder and Victor Vasarely to Richard Anuszkiewicz and Fletcher Benton—to a host of lesser-known figures who also deserve to be household names.

Beginning Feb. 20, the Museum will be open Wednesday and Thursday, 11 am to 5 pm, Friday 11 am to 8 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday, noon to 5 pm.
Programming and Events

MEMBERS’ PREVIEW DAY
Friday, February 19, 10 am-5 pm
As an exclusive benefit, members are invited to preview this original, new exhibition before it opens to the public! Admission is free for members, and timed-entry tickets can be reserved online to guarantee entry at the desired time. Not yet a member? Join today to visit during Members’ Preview Day on February 19!

VIRTUAL PUBLIC EXHIBITION LECTURES

New Sensation: The Story of Op Art
Wednesday, March 3, 6 pm
$5 for members; $8 for non-members.
Joe Houston, artist, curator, and contributing author for the exhibition catalogue

This presentation explores the cultural and art historical context of the 1960s that gave rise to a radical approach to painting, which made the viewer’s own perception the central subject of the art work. While Op art seemed to emerge overnight on as a fully-fledged international art movement, Joe Houston traces its deeper origins and makes the case for its inevitability in the continuum of modernism.

Optical Conscious: The Art of Bridget Riley
Saturday, April 10, 2 pm
$5 for members; $8 for non-members.
Frances Follin, PhD, art historian and contributing author for the exhibition catalogue

One of the most successful artists of Op art was Bridget Riley, who became famous on both sides of the Atlantic after her work appeared in the exhibition ‘The Responsive Eye’ in New York in 1965. Interest in Riley’s 1960s’ work, and in Op art more widely, has been revived over the past decade, which followed years of critics saying her works had “no content” and did “not lend themselves to intellectual exploration.” This talk will consider how Riley’s work from that period can be read in relation to the Cold War, the increasing impact of science and technology on everyday life, and conflicting desires both to embrace materialism and to reject it in favor of a more spiritual basis to life.

VIRTUAL SPECIAL EXHIBITION PROGRAM

The Science of Seeing
Wednesday, March 31, 7 pm
$5 for members; $8 for non-members.
Maria Lim, MD, ophthalmologist, with Bryon Chambers, Manager of Public Programming

Explore the physiology of the eye, learn how we see, and study visual processing in the brain while considering the art on view in the special exhibition Moving Vision: Op and Kinetic Art from the Sixties and Seventies.

VIRTUAL SPECIAL EXHIBITION TOURS

These virtual, guided tours will provide highlights of the current special exhibition. Pre-registration required. Purchase tickets at okcmoa.com. $5 for members; $8 for non-members.

Wednesday, March 17, 6 pm

Wednesday, April 21, 6 pm