2017-02-14

12488 - 20170507 - Retrospective of contemporary Native American artist on view at the Dayton Art Institute - Dayton, OH - 11.02.2017-07.05.2017

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Kay WalkingStick, Chief Joseph series, 1974–76. Acrylic, ink, and wax on canvas, 20 x 15 in. each. (27 panels of a 36-panel series). National Museum of the American Indian 26/5366.000–026. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.
 
The Dayton Art Institute opens its 2017 special exhibition season with a major retrospective of contemporary Native American artist Kay WalkingStick, on view at the museum from February 11 through May 7.

Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist features about 60 of her most notable works, drawn from public and private collections across the country and from the collection of the artist. The special exhibition demonstrates the breadth of WalkingStick’s achievements and her contributions to American art. While WalkingStick’s work has been widely exhibited and discussed, this touring retrospective will be the first survey of her singular career.

The exhibition, which originated at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), was co-curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo), Associate Curator, and David Penney, Associate Director for Museum Scholarship at the Smithsonian’s NMAI. Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

“We are thrilled to participate in this important, traveling retrospective, and are proud to further the exhibition’s mission by presenting the multidimensional artworks of Kay WalkingStick within the context of The DAI’s encyclopedic collection,” said Katherine Ryckman Siegwarth, in-house curator for The Dayton Art Institute.

Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist surveys the career of one of today’s most accomplished Native American artists and a leading practitioner of contemporary landscape painting. Over the course of four decades, WalkingStick has tirelessly explored her own complex cultural identity, engaging Native American history along with feminism, Minimalism, and other key art historical movements. She is particularly renowned for her majestic and sensual landscapes, which imbue natural scenery with the charge of personal and collective memory. In addition to tracing WalkingStick’s artistic journey, this exhibition offers a fresh perspective on issues of race, identity, and national history that are central both to contemporary Native American art and to American culture at large.

WalkingStick’s biography is intimately tied to her art. The exhibition examines key moments of her life, which further illuminate the artist’s methods and motivations. As a young artist in the 1960s and 1970s, she created bold, graphic paintings using a color-blocking technique, eschewing modeling in favor of expanses of flat hues.

By the mid-1970s, WalkingStick shifted away from the figure and toward abstraction; at the same time, she grew increasingly interested in her Native American heritage. During this period, she researched American Indian history and made paintings in homage to famous Native figures such as Chief Joseph, the great Nez Perce leader, and Sakajawea. Many of these are marked by thickly impastoed, sculptural surfaces, achieved by scratching and manipulating layers of acrylic paint mixed with wax.

During the 1980s, WalkingStick returned to figuration through diptychs in which she paired abstract and naturalistic representations of the same landscape, charting her travels throughout the United States and around the world. This format, which WalkingStick has continually developed and returned to, has become her hallmark. Shortly after beginning to work in diptychs, WalkingStick suffered a devastating personal loss and her art became more volatile, dark, and intense.

Beginning in 1996, WalkingStick’s extended trips in Italy gave her the opportunity to study that country’s landscapes and art. During this period, she produced sensual paintings and drawings, often embedding personal narratives about sexuality, memory, and the body in representations of architecture and nature. The influences of Greco-Roman and Italian Renaissance art can be seen in decorative motifs; in the use of new materials, such as gold leaf; and in the Mediterranean views that frequently appear. WalkingStick’s sketchbooks, several of which are included in this exhibition, also document her travels in Italy and beyond, attesting to her deft ability to weave together disparate influences.

Over the past two decades, WalkingStick’s interests in landscape, the body, and history have merged in majestic and often monumental compositions. While the diptych format still appears, it does not dominate or dictate her mature practice. References to specific places—often sites laden with historical associations—have become more common and many works indulge, simply and unapologetically, in the beauty of the natural world.

WalkingStick’s most recent paintings synthesize themes that she has explored throughout her career, joining rugged Western scenery with decorative motifs drawn from local Native peoples. These paintings unite figuration and abstraction, Western and Native aesthetics, and personal and collective memories. Through the variety and sustained quality of her paintings and drawings over four decades, WalkingStick has challenged reductive understandings of what contemporary Native art can be.

“We’re honored to be one of only two Midwestern institutions to host this important exhibition,” said The Dayton Art Institute’s Director and CEO Michael R. Roediger. “The DAI, as a civic museum, is committed to being inclusive of all, and this exhibition offers broad appeal for those interested in Native American art, contemporary art, or landscape painting.”
 
 
 
 
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2017-02-13

12487 - 20170430 - Exhibition at Yale Center for British Art features nearly three hundred objects from international collections - New Haven, CONN - 02.02.2017-30.04.2017

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William Verelst, Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians, 1734–35, oil on canvas, Winterthur Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, Art Gallery and Garden, Gift of Henry Francis du Pont.
 
This February, the Yale Center for British Art premiered the first exhibition to explore the instrumental roles of the Hanoverian princesses Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719–1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818)—all of whom married into the British royal family—and how they shaped the nation’s society and culture during a time of significant political and social transformation. Organized by the Center in partnership with the UK’s Historic Royal Palaces, Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World brings together nearly three hundred objects from public and private collections across Britain, Europe, and the United States. The exhibition features works by the artists Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), Mary Delany (1700–1788), Allan Ramsay (1713–1784), Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), George Stubbs (1724–1806), and Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788); craftsmen and designers Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690–1763), Matthew Boulton (1728–1809), and Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795); and architects William Kent (1685–1748) and William Chambers (1723–1796), among many others. Elaborate court costumes and jewels, musical manuscripts, botanical and anatomical illustrations, architectural drawings and garden designs, royal children’s artwork, and the princesses’ own scientific instruments are being showcased. These important works serve to show how the princesses promoted the arts, sciences, trade, and industry, and underline their development of new models of philanthropy, especially to benefit the health of women and the welfare of children. These efforts spurred unprecedented intellectual exchange and social transformation which continues to have significance for us today. Enlightened Princesses debuted at the Center in New Haven from February 2 to April 30, 2017, and subsequently will travel to Kensington Palace in London, once home to Caroline and Charlotte, where it will be on view from June 22 to November 12, 2017.

“Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte had sweeping intellectual, social, cultural, and political interests, which helped to shape the courts in which they lived, and encouraged the era’s greatest philosophers, scientists, artists, and architects to develop important ideas that would guide ensuing generations,” said Amy Meyers, Director of the Yale Center for British Art and organizing curator at the Center. “The palaces and royal gardens they inhabited served as incubators for enlightened conversation and experimentation, and functioned as platforms to project the latest cultural developments to an international audience. Their innovative contributions across disciplines held great significance centuries ago and continue to inform our lives.”

The lives of Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte straddled the eighteenth century. Caroline, the wife of the future George II, arrived in London in 1714 when the first Hanoverian king, George I, was crowned. She became queen consort after her husband succeeded his father in 1727. Augusta was married to Caroline’s eldest son, Frederick Prince of Wales, but never became queen as her husband died young. However, as mother of the next king, George III, Augusta became crucial to shaping his reign. In 1761, George III married Charlotte, who died in 1818, two years before her husband.

“Until this point, the contributions of these three princesses have been little understood, and it is the aim of this exhibition to demonstrate how they influenced the interests of their era in the most vibrant of ways. In their engagement and support of many important projects and initiatives, they provided a blueprint for the royal women who followed them—right up to the present. For this, it is our intention to bring to the princesses the attention they deserve,” said Joanna Marschner, Senior Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and lead curator of the exhibition.

In addition to masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art and Historic Royal Palaces, Enlightened Princesses presents works from the Royal Collection Trust, who have loaned over eighty objects for this exhibition. In total, nearly fifty esteemed collections are represented, including works from Royal Society; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond; British Museum; National Portrait Gallery, London; British Library; Victoria and Albert Museum; Science Museum, London; Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library; Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library; and Yale University. The display also features a new work created by the artist Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA) (b. 1962) specifically for this exhibition, which has been inspired by a meeting, in 1753, between Princess Augusta and Mrs. Eliza Lucas Pinckney, the owner of a slave plantation in South Carolina, which was then a British colony. A letter written by Mrs. Pinckney to a friend, detailing the encounter, is included in the exhibition as a special loan from the collection of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of South Carolina. The dress worn by Mrs. Pinckney on the occasion, made of silk produced on her plantation, is also on display, courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

EXHIBITION THEMES
Enlightened Princesses is organized according to five themes and features a rich variety of objects that offer a glimpse into the princesses’ private lives, courts, and legacies. Oil portraits of Caroline (ca. 1735), by Joseph Highmore (1692–1780); Augusta (1769), by Allan Ramsay (1713–1784); and Charlotte (1771), by Johan Joseph Zoffany (1733–1810) will set the stage for the exhibition.

The Court as a Stage
For Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte, the royal court operated as a stage, not only for the performance of music, dance, and theater but also as a political and cultural arena. In their furnishing of these spaces, the princesses constructed a visual statement of the authority of the Hanoverian dynasty, under which the patronage of music and the arts would flourish. At the same time, they had to navigate the inherently political nature of public and private life at court during a period that witnessed an information revolution, initiated by the mass circulation of newspapers, journals, and magazines replete with commentary, debate, and critique. This section includes Hans Holbein the Younger’s Lady Lister (ca. 1532–43), one of the artist’s many portrait drawings of courtiers at the Tudor court, which were particularly prized by Caroline and hung at Kensington Palace in celebration of the distinguished pedigree of the Royal House. These drawings were displayed alongside images of the present generation of the royal family. The painting “The Music Party”: Frederick, Prince of Wales with his Three Eldest Sisters (1733), by Philippe Mercier (1689–1760), is one such example. It depicts Caroline’s eldest son playing the cello. He is accompanied by his three sisters—Princess Anne (1709–1759) at the harpsichord; Princess Amelia (1711–1786) reading a volume of John Milton’s poems; and Princess Caroline (1713–1757) playing the mandora.

Cultures of Learning: Powerful Conversations
At the heart of their social circles, Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte built relationships with the leading cultural and intellectual figures of their age, including politicians, clergymen, philosophers, gardeners, architects, authors, playwrights, and composers. The princesses’ interests often overlapped or had a common focus, such as in science, medicine, philanthropy, and especially maternity, as well as the commercial interests of the state in Britain and abroad. Their pursuits in this area are represented by such objects as an oil portrait by John Vanderbank (1694–1739) of Sir Isaac Newton (1726); Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of his friend, the musician Carl Friedrich Abel, later acquired by Queen Charlotte for whom he provided music (1777); and Allan Ramsey’s remarkably nuanced portrait of Charlotte’s medical adviser, Dr. William Hunter (1760).

Royal Women: Education, Charity, and Health
Attitudes regarding royal child-rearing changed rapidly over the lifetimes of Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte. There were shifts in methodology and focus in response to the evolving contemporary philosophies about childhood, sentimentality, and individual freedoms. The princesses were active contributors to the educational programs devised for their children, and sought to draw them into conversations beyond the palace walls. In their public roles as encouragers and protectors, the princesses were involved in ambitious and wide-reaching public philanthropic projects, organizations, and societies, especially those connected with health and social welfare. A precious silk satin baby robe (1762) belonging to George, Prince of Wales (later George IV), the eldest child of George III and Queen Charlotte, compares poignantly with tokens left by unmarried and impoverished mothers as they consigned their children to the Foundling Hospital. The hospital was a charity supported by all three of the princesses, which reflected their progressive interests, and it became an outlet to promote social change, through assistance it provided to disenfranchised and voiceless children in the greater society.

Political Gardening
Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte created and recast each other’s gardens, which were political and social spaces, as well as private retreats. They drew in the products of empire—plants and animals were collected from many continents, not only for their beauty and rarity but also their economic value. Similarly, collections of animals and birds brought back from the exploration of these “new” worlds were an important feature in the royal gardens. In the design of their gardens, the princesses explored contemporary garden philosophies and exercised their architectural ambitions. Many of their landscapes were made to be shared, not just with the community of gardeners, philosophers, and scientists the princesses drew into their circle but with a wider community, fostering an unprecedented relationship between monarchy and subject. Mark Catesby’s (1683–1749) dynamic watercolor The Painted Finch and the Loblolly Bay (ca. 1722–26) and an intricate cut-paper collage by Mary Delany, Cactus Grandiflorus, melon thistle (1778), serve as evidence of the princesses’ entanglement in Britain’s imperial ambition.

To Promote and Protect: The Princesses and the Wider World
To promote the arts and sciences, Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte supported and championed national products, and allowed their interest to be used by enterprising industrialists. The development of advanced industrial technologies—including cloth weaving, porcelain production, and metal casting—enabled unprecedented mass-produced consumer goods. This ensured, for the first time, that the image of the British monarchy was widely disseminated in a way recognized as a “brand” to domestic and international audiences. Additionally, Britain’s increased colonial expansion following the American War of Independence resulted in heightened interest in the fruits of empire, which the princesses celebrated by furnishing their homes and developing their gardens with imports from the Caribbean, India, Africa, China, and Australasia. Masterpieces that have been gathered to reflect the princesses’ engagement with the wider world include a painting by William Verelst (1704–1752), Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians (1734–35), as well as one of the Center’s treasured works, a painting by George Stubbs of a zebra belonging to Queen Charlotte (1763).
 
 
 
 
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2017-02-10

12486 - 20170507 - Philbrook presents world-premiere of found photographs - Tulsa, OKLA - 05.02.2017-07.05.2017

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Chrysler Building.
 
A recent acquisition of over 4,000 photographs by 1930s Condé Nast photographer Lusha Nelson has led Philbrook Museum of Art into a 10-year research and exhibition initiative to tell his untold story. This lost archive was purchased from a New York City estate sale in the early 1980s, moved across the country, and disappeared into private hands for over three decades before transferring to Philbrook. With little written on this successful young photographer who died scarcely six years into his career, Chief Curator Catherine Whitney and Curator of European Art Dr. Sarah Lees have embarked on an ambitious multi-year effort to introduce Lusha Nelson and his work to a 21st century audience. The first-ever solo exhibition of his work, debuting in Tulsa on February 5, 2017, focuses on this virtually unknown figure whose diverse portfolio includes subjects like Katharine Hepburn, Jesse Owens, Alfred Stieglitz, circus performers, socialites, and everyday Americans living during the Great Depression.

Born in Riga, Latvia in 1907, Lusha Nelson immigrated to the United States at the age of 15. He worked in various positions during his late teens and early 20s including as a sous-chef in a Catskill Mountains resort where he met his wife, Irene. Nelson had earlier considered becoming a painter, but found his true passion in photography, inspired particularly – as his wife later suggested – by films like Sergei Eisenstein’s October: Ten Days that Shook the World (1928), an account of the Russian Revolution. He purchased his first camera in the late 1920s before ultimately cementing his career as staff photographer with Condé Nast Publications by the fall of 1932. There he worked and socialized with some of the most important photographers of the day, including Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Nelson died in May 1938 at the age of 30 following a long illness.

The Philbrook collection includes his self-proclaimed “first photograph with any camera” as well as dramatic shots of celebrities, circus performers, fashion advertising, and more. His powerful, straightforward style as both a commercial and documentary photographer prompted Nelson’s mentor Steichen to write in an article that Nelson “did not try to interpret his subject, he simply photographed” it. His wife echoed this sentiment in 1941, writing, “Although wanting to earn a livelihood through his photography, he would never capitulate to his sitters in the way of retouching or prettifying.” This realist approach in the 1930s centered on documenting his world rather than altering images brings new perspective to the 21st century cultural discussions on the moral use of Photoshop in publications as it pertains to personal body image or even the social media phenomenon “#nofilter.”

“Nelson’s distinctive style was uncompromising – he didn’t use typical retouching techniques of the day,” commented co-curator Lees. “The power of the images is in their simplicity – as an artist, he’s not trying to flatter the sitter and, at the same time, he captures the drama of every day. Even after 80 years, his photos have a freshness and immediacy, offering a new perspective on the 1930s.”

“Reintroducing an artist and his work to the public after nearly a century is such a rare opportunity,” noted co-curator Whitney. “Why are these images ‘lost’? The artistry and this artist deserve attention and we have the opportunity to not only discover the art but also discover the artist and, most importantly, share both with the world.”

“His story is simply fascinating,” reflected Philbrook Director Scott Stulen. “He’s living in New York waiting tables before ultimately landing a job as a photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines. He’s completely committed to his craft taking thousands of photos in less than 10 years covering a wide range of subjects: Hollywood celebrities to the forgotten people of 1930s America. This acquisition and subsequent 10-year research initiative gives us the opportunity to introduce this exceptional photographer to the world.”

The first exhibition of this project strives to introduce Nelson and celebrate the rich range of his work by exploring his distinctive vision of 1930s America.
 
 
 
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2017-02-09

12485 - 20170430 - The Ringling presents "A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe" - Sarasota, FLA - 04.02.2017-30.04.2017

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Mirror Case with the Attack on the Castle of Love, France, 1320–40. Ivory.

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art presents A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe, a major international loan exhibition that brings together more than 100 works including stained glass, precious metals, ivories, tapestries, paintings, prints and illuminated manuscripts. The show has been organized by The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, in partnership with The Ringling with objects coming from 25 prestigious public institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library and Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with The Walters Art Museum to bring this extraordinary group of objects to our visitors in Sarasota,” remarked Steven High, executive director, The Ringling. “These works will not only allow guests to engage with art in new ways but give them the opportunity to view pieces from world-renowned collections.”

The exhibition focuses on the late medieval and early Renaissance period in Europe (roughly 1300-1500), a time in which societal changes prompted a new interest in human experience, the enjoyment of nature and the pursuit of pleasure. As a result, the art of this period functioned in a rich sensory world that was integral to its appreciation. These works were not only seen, but also touched, smelled and heard. The exhibition will bring together sacred and secular art to reveal the role of the senses in courtly ritual and religious practice.

A Feast for the Senses seeks to recover the traces of sounds, smell, taste and touch inherent in the materiality of these late medieval objects and give them a voice, bringing them to life for the modern viewer. The oft-held notion of the Middle Ages as a period of sensory deprivation is disproven through the many objects on view that encourage sensory engagement. As visitors move through the exhibition space they will encounter interactive displays including Audio Spotlights, Scent Pop stations, and touchable replicas, all designed to encourage an appreciation of how art was designed to stimulate the senses of the medieval viewer.

“These are objects that were meant to be touched and used, not simply looked at. A Feast for the Senses will evoke the experiences people in this period had with them, allowing visitors to gain a deeper understanding of this time in history” stated Virginia Brilliant, Ulla R. Searing curator of collections at The Ringling.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with new research that significantly contributes to the emerging field of sensory perception within art history. The essays, by leading scholars including exhibition curator Martina Bagnoli and Virginia Brilliant, explore the themes of the exhibition through investigations into religious practices and rituals, aristocratic feasts and celebrations, music and literature and the art of courtship, love and marriage.

 
 
 
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2017-02-08

12484 - 20170430 - Masterpieces in American landscape painting on display at the Wichita Art Museum - Wichita - 04.02.2017-30.04.2017

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Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Autumn Woods, 1886. Oil on linen. The New-York Historical Society, Gift of Mrs. Albert Bierstadt, 1910.11.
 
For the first time at the Wichita Art Museum, 41 landscape paintings of early American art history from the premier collection of the New-York Historical Society will be on view in The Poetry of Nature, featuring masterpieces by such notable artists as Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Albert Bierstadt. The exhibition offers a varied survey of important paintings conceived in the style of the Hudson River School and further enriched by each artist’s personal vision.

In the early to mid-19th century, the expansive landscapes of the Hudson River Valley as well as Catskill and Adirondack Mountains inspired a remarkably talented group of American artists, a circle now known as the Hudson River School. Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand were the leaders of the early movement, encouraging a generation of artists who found life-long inspiration in the contemplation and study of nature. Landscape was not greatly valued as a category for painting at the time, and the Hudson River School made landscape painting an acceptable subject for American artists.

Utilizing masterful effects of light, the Hudson River School artists created intricate, often idealized views of nature that conveyed the physical details of each landscape as well as its atmosphere. Artists of the Hudson River School also journeyed beyond New York State to other regions noted for scenic beauty, such as New Hampshire and coastal New England.

These artists—part of the romantic movement in 19th-century America that extended to literary figures including Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper—extolled the majesty of the American wilderness and the idea of man living in harmonious balance with nature.

The impact of their visual imagery had great consequences for the way Americans considered this landscape as part of the country’s cultural heritage, evident in the fact that many of the places revered by the Hudson River School are now national parks and state wilderness preserves.

The exhibition has been organized by the New-York Historical Society.
 
 
  
 
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2017-02-07

12483 - 20170423 - "Modern Masters, Contemporary Icons" exhibition at The Rockwell Museum - Corning, NY - 03.02.2017-23.04.2017

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Charles Demuth, Three Figures on a Beach, 1934. Watercolor and graphite on paper. Collection of the Old Jail Art Center. Bequest of Bill Bomar known as the Jewel Nail Bomar and William P. Bomar, Jr. Collection. 1993.038.
 
The Rockwell Museum announces the exhibition Modernist Masters, Contemporary Icons: Highlights from the Old Jail Art Center. Including featured works by John Marin, Grant Wood, and Andy Warhol, the exhibition is on view at The Rockwell Museum from February 3 through April 23, 2017.

An intimate collection of American masterworks from the Old Jail Art Center (OJAC) in Albany, TX, Modern Masters, Contemporary Icons includes works by the most highly acclaimed American artists in history. Work by American greats like Grant Wood, Alexander Calder, and Thomas Hart-Benton will be presented for the first time at The Rockwell. Other artists, familiar to The Rockwell’s collection like Fritz Scholder, John Marin and Arthur Dove, are also included – providing a new dialogue with The Rockwell’s modernist water colors, works on paper and sculpture. Comprised of 30 modernist works of landscape, portraiture, nudes, modern life stills and wildlife, this exhibition celebrates the work of the most honored American art masters of our time.

The modern visions of the American landscape with subjects ranging from depictions of the desert southwest to the Maine coast are presented in various manners by a range of artists. Yet the dynamic application and handling of media often supersedes the modern artist’s need for a convincing pictorial space. Many landscapes verge on becoming non-objective abstractions, emphasizing the emotive and dynamic powers of brushstroke, color, line, and other formal qualities. The accurate depiction of a scene is secondary—simply serving as a means to an end in order to enforce the concept of art for art’s sake.

The representation of the human figure varies within the collection. The traditional approach of accurately recording the human body stands in stark contrast to more expressive likenesses. An elegant drawing of a human nude reflects the controlled skills of an artist while expressive gestures elicit more emotive responses from the viewer. Other times, simple to enigmatic narratives that provoke interpretation are created by the placement of the human figure in a landscape, engagement with other figures, or the utilization of simple props.

The landscape and human figure are prevalent subjects in the OJAC’s modern and contemporary painting, drawing, print, and sculpture collections as well as those selected for inclusion in this exhibition that span 100 years of artistic creation.

The Old Jail Art Center, Albany TX
Like The Rockwell Museum, many art institutions begin humbly and manifest themselves by the desire of individuals to share their holdings with the public. So it was in 1980 with the Old Jail Art Center’s founders Bill Bomar (1919 – 1991) and Reilly Nail (1920 – 2006). Both were born in Albany, Texas—a small rural town rich in history, ranching, and the new wealth of oil. Both had the financial means to attend prestigious schools and begin collecting art. Upon graduation from Cranbrook Art Academy, Bill Bomar moved to New York City to study with John Sloan, Hans Hoffman, and Amédée Ozenfant. While working and living in NYC, Bomar began to collect domestically scaled paintings, prints, drawings, and sculpture of European and American Modern artists whom he admired and influenced his own artwork. Later, Bomar moved to Taos, New Mexico and collected the works of artists active in the New Mexico region. Reilly Nail graduated from Princeton University and had an award-winning career in New York City working as a television producer. From his college years on, he purchased art from galleries as well as from artist friends. Without a concern of purchasing art as an investment, both founders collected works that they individually responded to including young contemporary artists they befriended and supported.

The OJAC maintains a diverse collection of Modern American and European masters as well as works by well- and lesser-known contemporary artists. Over the past 35 years, the OJAC art collection has grown through gifts and purchases, continuing the approach established by Bomar and Nail of adding to complement and enhance established collections, while supporting contemporary artists through collecting and exhibiting their work.
 
 
 
 
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2017-02-06

12482 - 20170514 - The Morgan presents treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden - New York - 03.02.2017-14.05.2017

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Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Dutch, 1606–1669), Three Thatched Cottages by a Road, ca. 1640, pen and brown ink and wash, with touches of white heightening. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseu.
 
The Nationalmuseum, Sweden’s largest and most distinguished art institution, is collaborating with the Morgan Library & Museum to bring more than seventy-five masterpieces from its renowned collections to New York in an extraordinary new exhibition opening February 3. The show features work by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, Antoine Watteau, and François Boucher, and is the first collaboration between the two institutions in almost fifty years. Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden: The Collections of Count Tessin runs through May 14.

The Nationalmuseum’s core holdings were assembled by Count Carl Gustaf Tessin (1696–1770), a diplomat and one of the great art collectors of his day. The son and grandson of architects, Tessin held posts in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, where he came into contact with the leading Parisian artists of the time and commissioned many works from them. By the time he left the city in 1742, he amassed an impressive collection of paintings and drawings.

Among the fourteen paintings in the exhibition are three commissioned by Count Tessin and exhibited at the 1740 Parisian Salon. Chief among these is Boucher’s Triumph of Venus, which is making its first journey to North America. Other paintings include Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s Dachshund Pehr with Dead Game and Rifle, and a Portrait of Count Tessin by Jacques-André-Joseph Aved, in which the collector is shown among his art, books, and medals. Six works by Jean-Siméon Chardin, notably the Morning Toilette, complete the group.

The drawings in the exhibition include works by Italian masters such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Annibale Carracci. Northern European artists are represented by Dürer, Hendrick Goltzius, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, and Anthony van Dyck, among others. The French drawings begin with Primaticcio and practitioners of the Fontainebleau school and include works by Jacques Callot and Nicholas Poussin, as well as Count Tessin’s French contemporaries, Watteau, Boucher, and Chardin.

“We are delighted to host this exhibition of masterworks from the Nationalmuseum,” said Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “The selection of paintings and drawings is of the highest quality. Fine examples of work from the Italian, French, and Northern European schools are represented, with a group of sixty master drawings forming the heart of the show. We are deeply grateful to the museum’s director general Berndt Arell and his curatorial staff for making this collaboration possible.

“The exhibition continues a tradition at the Morgan of partnering with Europe’s leading cultural institutions. Over the last several years, the museum has mounted critically acclaimed shows from the Uffizi in Florence, the Louvre, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, and the Biblioteca Reale in Turin.”

Tessin Collects
Carl Gustaf Tessin is distinguished among his Swedish contemporaries by his extraordinary versatility: he was a politician, courtier, diplomat, public official, artist, writer, historian, collector, and philosopher. Son of the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, Carl Gustaf was an amateur of the arts from a young age, an enthusiasm fostered by his early travels through Europe, including a first visit to Paris in 1715–16, a brief return in 1718–19, and another trip with his new wife Ulla in 1728–29. Following his father’s death in 1728, Carl Gustaf inherited a substantial collection of paintings, drawings, and prints and the position of surintendant (surveyor) at the royal palace.

Tessin’s longest stay in Paris was from 1739 until 1742, when he served as Sweden’s unofficial ambassador to the French court. Driven by a passion for art and elegant living, he commissioned and purchased paintings and drawings, assembling a notable collection. The costs of maintaining his lifestyle in Paris would, however, leave him with lasting financial difficulty after his return to Stockholm.

Tessin Sells His Collections to the Royal Family
Tessin was forced in 1749 to sell part of his collection of paintings to the royal family of Sweden as his financial situation deteriorated. He sold 243 paintings to King Frederick I, who then presented them to his daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Louisa Ulrika, who considered Tessin a confidant. The following year, in 1750, Tessin was compelled to sell the majority of his drawings to Louisa Ulrika’s husband, who had succeeded his father as King Adolf Frederick. This series of sales to the royal family helped form the core of the royal collection of old master drawings and paintings. Most of the collection was kept in the Royal Palace, Stockholm, which Tessin’s father designed. Some paintings were kept at nearby Drottningholm Palace, Louisa Ulrika’s favored retreat, also designed by Tessin’s father.

Gustav III and the Founding of the Nationalmuseum
Adolf Frederick died in 1771 and was succeeded by his son, King Gustav III, who had been tutored by Tessin, and who was an acclaimed patron of the arts. Gustav’s ambition was to establish a royal collection open to the public. In 1775, he created the Royal Library, which served as a repository for the king’s collection of drawings. After Gustav’s assassination in 1792, a Royal Museum—primarily a collection of paintings and sculpture—was founded in his memory. These two collections would eventually form the core of the Nationalmuseum’s holdings. In the 1860s, works were inventoried and transferred to the museum: the drawings in 1863, followed by the paintings in 1865. The Nationalmuseum opened its doors in 1866.

The Nationalmuseum Today
Today, the Nationalmuseum houses a wide-ranging collection of paintings, drawings, sculpture, decorative arts, and design, but is renowned for its strength in old master paintings and drawings, especially those of the eighteenth century, largely thanks to Count Tessin. Closed for renovation since 2013, the museum will reopen in 2018 with state-of-the-art climate control throughout its historic 1866 building and expanded space to display more of its collection, offering museumgoers a broader and richer experience.
 
 
 
 
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2017-02-03

12481 - 20170604 - Keith Haring exhibit at The Petersen - Los Angeles - 17.12.2016-04.06.2017

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Installation view.
 
The Petersen Automotive Museum presents its newest exhibition in the Armand Hammer Foundation Gallery, “The Unconventional Canvases of Keith Haring.” The new exhibit, which opened Saturday, December 17th, 2016 and runs until Sunday, June 4th, 2017, explores the works and themes of beloved New York artist Keith Haring and features five vehicles, each covered in Haring’s unique work. This is the first exhibit of its kind to feature five Haring works of this type. BMW continues its long history of support for the arts and culture, as a proud partner of the Petersen museum and through its support of this gallery.
“Keith Haring was such an important and loved figure in the art world and we are honored to be able to display such a unique collection of his art,” said Terry Karges, Executive Director of the Petersen Automotive Museum. “We had such a positive response after displaying his Land Rover in our lobby that we knew we had to share the rest of his art cars with our patrons. This new exhibit is a prime example of the Petersen’s mission to merge the worlds of art and automobiles.”

Keith Haring rose to prominence in the 1980s and quickly became one of the world’s most influential modern artists. His work explored both the deeply political and the personal and, thanks to its simplistic, almost universal figures, Haring was able to reach across divides of race, class, gender and sexuality. His works on automobiles were created during artist-in-residencies at the Montreux Jazz Fest and 24 Hours of Le Mans, as well as at promotional events for the Fast Art Gallery in New Jersey and Galerie Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf. The imagery reflects the atmosphere, speed and life Haring witnessed at each of these locations.

Vehicles on display include a 1962 SCAF/Mortarini Mini Ferrari 330 P-2, a 1963 Buick Special, a 1971 Land Rover Series III 109 Station Wagon, 1987 Honda CBR1000F Hurricane motorcycle and a 1991 BMW Z1. The exhibit runs through Sunday, June 4th, 2017 and is located in the Armand Hammer Foundation Gallery on the first floor of the museum.
 
 
 
 
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2017-02-02

12480 - 20170507 - The Met Breuer presents first major retrospective in the United States of Marisa Merz - New York - 24.01.2017-07.05.2017

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Marisa Merz (Italian, born 1926), Untitled, 1993. Copper wire, unfired clay, steel structure Courtesy of the artist and Fondazione Merz. Courtesy Archivio Merz; photo by Paolo Pellion di Persano.
 
 
The Met Breuer presents the first major retrospective in the United States of the Italian painter, sculptor, and installation artist Marisa Merz (born Turin, Italy, 1926). Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space brings together five decades of work to explore Merz’s prodigious talent and influence. The exhibition features her early experiments with nontraditional art materials and processes, her mid-career installations that balance intimacy with impressive scale, and the enigmatic portrait heads she created after 1975.

Merz gained international prominence as part of the circle of artists associated with Arte Povera in the 1960s. An avant-garde movement that rejected Italy’s postwar material wealth in favor of “poor” materials, Arte Povera was identified with the radicalism of the student movement but proclaimed no stylistic or ideological credo except the negation of existing codes and art world limitations. As the sole female protagonist of the movement and one of the few Italian women at the time to present her work in major international venues, she showed a practice that was inflected by gender and cultural differences. Merz’s challenging and evocative body of work was deeply personal and decidedly anticareerist. Its consequence and scope also exceeded its occasionally diminutive scale. Ultimately, Merz’s work was as much a response to her own experience as it was to the art of her contemporaries, and her pioneering practice exists in the interstices between art and life that has become so central to contemporary art making.

Merz’s oeuvre, distinguished by incredible range and uncompromising consistency, often crystallizes the ephemeral and breaks down barriers between public and private space. Her early works started as an expansion of her domesticity, including the group of works in Untitled (Living Sculptures), soft yet sharp-edged tangles of sheet metal that first hung from the ceiling of her kitchen in the mid-1960s, and the group of delicate but powerful objects Merz made from nontraditional materials such as copper wire and knitting needles. In the mid-1970s, the artist began sculpting a series of small heads. Roughly modeled in unfired clay, sometimes coated with luminous pigments or gilding, and encased in wax, these Teste [Heads] have become emblematic of the artist and her more recent work. They also anticipate the return to figuration that was central to Italian art of the 1980s. Though seemingly a departure from the abstract nature of her early work, her Teste and the related, jewel-like portraits on paper demonstrate Merz’s lasting engagement with the possibilities of line as well as the indexical trace of the artist.

The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
 
 
 
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2017-02-01

12479 - 20170422 - Krannert Art Museum "Enough to Live On: Art from the WPA" - Champaign, IL - 27.01.2017-22.04.2017

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Edwin Boyd Johnson, Mural Painting (detail), 1934. Oil on canvas. Allocated by the U.S. Government, commissioned through the New Deal Art Projects 1934-2-22 (c) Edwin Boyd Johnson
 
Thousands of American artists created works that captured the state of the nation in the 1930s and early 1940s, portraying agrarian and industrial scenes, workers, class struggles and patriotic themes.

The works, created through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project, were allocated to universities, libraries and museums when the project ended. Krannert Art Museum is displaying some of the hundreds of WPA works it houses in an exhibition, “Enough to Live On: Art from the WPA,”.

The Federal Art Project included printmakers, painters, muralists and sculptors, as well as art teachers. The artists were given broad themes for their work – regionalism, which included agrarian scenes and portrayals of Midwestern life, and social realism, which included depictions of class consciousness and of working life and nightlife. The art was representational and different stylistically from the abstract art movement that had been popular in Europe and was beginning to migrate to America.

The artworks that were created were often displayed in federal, state and municipal buildings, libraries, hospitals and public schools. They were meant for the average person, said Kathryn Koca Polite, assistant curator at Krannert Art Museum. “Anyone could go up to one of the works and understand it and appreciate it,” she said.

Holger Cahill, the director of the Federal Art Project, “requested artists to depict the hopes and the dreams of the average person, but also the realities of a broken nation. He wanted art for everyone,” Koca Polite said.

The exhibition includes a mural painting by Edwin Boyd Johnson that was recently restored. There were several holes and tears in the canvas, paint loss and it was in need of cleaning. After being repaired by Restoration Division, a fine art conservation firm, it is now able to be shown after being in storage for many years.

The painting has a blocky, angular, Art Deco look to it, with many figures and symbols intended to instill a sense of national pride.

“You have notions of family with the mother and child, a symbol of sustenance and nourishment through the sheaf of wheat, a man holding a hammer as a reference to hard work, a representation of the idea of industry versus the common man with the inclusion of smokestacks, and a symbol of art with the classical nude placed on a pedestal.,” said Koca Polite. “All of these images symbolize different aspects of the nation. Perhaps it represents ideals the average person would want to aspire to, even in the midst of all that was going on in the nation at the time.”

Several woodblock prints by Illinois artist Charles Turzak that depict scenes of Chicago are included in the exhibition. The four prints on view show Oak Street Beach, Lincoln Park, a view from the north bank of the Chicago River and an industrial scene south of the Loop.

The exhibition also includes two lithographs by graphic artist Ida Abelman. “Wonders of Our Time” shows a group of gaunt figures beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.

“You get this sense of despair. Where are they going to get their next meal? How are they going to live?” Koca Polite said. Abelman’s work keenly brings home the issues of the era.

“Land Grant” also opened Jan. 26 at KAM. The exhibition arose out of an art and design seminar on curatorial methods, led by Terri Weissmann, an art history professor, and Amy L. Powell, Krannert Art Museum’s curator for modern and contemporary art. It marks the sesquicentennial of the University of Illinois by examining the history of its founding as a land grant university, land use practices, questions of indigeneity and the status of public higher education. The exhibition was organized by students, and it includes photos, paintings, documents, newspaper accounts and experimental projects from the collections of Krannert Art Museum, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the University Archives and other sources.

One of the central objects in the exhibition is a painting by Billy Morrow Jackson, “We the People: The Land Grant College Heritage,” that was commissioned by the U. of I. for the president’s office. The painting features portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Justin Morrill and Jonathan Baldwin Turner, all of whom were instrumental in creating and passing the Morrill Act establishing land-grant colleges.

“It shows the history of the university, but it’s only one portrayal of that history,” Powell said.

Students found documents, images and artworks that support the painting’s vision of a free and democratic education for all and others that share similar goals but demonstrate alternative models of education, she said, such as the Whole University Catalog, an effort by electrical engineering professor Heinz von Foerster with his students in 1969. Also on display is a concrete canoe painted in the pattern of a corn cob (titled Corn-Crete) from the Boneyard Yacht Club and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, an artifact from Inter-Collegiate Concrete Canoe Races that began in 1971.

They looked at objects examining the histories of indigenous people to the land that was given over to public education. One such object is a Bible printed in the Cherokee language, from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It is unbound, its pages loose, meaning it was never used, Powell said.

“It becomes this obstinate object of refusal,” she said.

The Jan. 26 opening at the museum also includes a small exhibition of light and kinetic sculpture and optical illusion, titled “Light and Movement in Sculpture,” curated by Powell and including the research of doctoral candidate in Art History Hayan Kim. The featured sculptures are from the 1960s and ‘70s, and many were created by artist-engineers. The time period was one of much collaboration between art and science, and the pieces show the future-oriented perspectives of their makers, often with a strong machinist impulse, Powell said.

One sculpture called “Lumia,” created by mechanical engineer Earl Reiback, consists of a light box with a motor turning a series of colorful prisms.

“(Reiback) saw himself as a choreographer and sculptor of light,” Powell said, adding that “Lumia” has a visual effect that has been compared to the aurora borealis.
Placing these works from the permanent collection in a gallery that experiences shifting light — the Kinkead Gallery near the Sixth Street entrance of the museum — gives the work an added dimension, especially the works that reflect light. In addition to Reiback, featured artists include Fletcher Benton, Chryssa, Max Finkelstein, Richard Hunt, Josef Levi, and James Libero Prestini. .
 
 
 
 
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2017-01-31

12478 - 20170416 - Exhibition of 52 bronzes by sculptor Auguste Rodin at the Portland Art Museum - Portland, ORE - 21.01.2017-18.06.2017

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The selected bronzes in the show represent the major achievements of Rodin’s long career.
 
The Portland Art Museum is presenting Rodin: The Human Experience—Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections, an exhibition of 52 bronzes by the groundbreaking French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The exhibition, which opened January 21, 2017, is being staged in Portland to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death.One of the greatest artists of his time, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) revolutionized the art of sculpture. While his works always remained faithful to nature, he departed from traditional practice in seeking to reveal the creative process. This exhibition of stunning bronzes demonstrates Rodin’s particular passion for modeling the human form in clay, the medium in which his hand and mind are most directly evidenced.

The selected bronzes in the show represent the major achievements of Rodin’s long career. They include powerful studies for The Burghers of Calais, as well as works derived from his masterpiece, The Gates of Hell. Others, such as The Night (Double Figure), demonstrate his experimentation with assemblage. Rodin: The Human Experience also features sculptures, such as Monumental Torso of the Walking Man, which demonstrate Rodin’s admiration for Michelangelo, and Dance Movement D, which speaks to his interest in understanding how the body moved.

The exhibition is especially rich in portraiture. Included are Rodin’s famous depictions of the writers Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac; the composer Gustav Mahler; the artist Claude Lorraine; one of his favorite dancers, Hanako; and his portrayal of The Hand of God, which is likely a self-portrait.

Rodin’s ability to use bronze to represent living flesh and his interest in expressing extreme psychological states were highly influential upon younger artists, both in Europe and America. Rodin: The Human Experience reveals why the artist is considered the crucial link between traditional and modern sculpture.

The Museum will present a variety of public programs and tours in conjunction with the exhibition, including an opening lecture by exhibition curator Judith Sobol, Executive Director of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.
 
 
 
 
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2017-01-30

12477 - 20170319 - Harvard's Fruitlands Museum celebrates the National Park Service with photographs by Xiomaro - Havard, MASS - 02.09.2016-19.03.2017

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Xiomaro, Longfellow Entry Hall.
 
Having turned 100 years old, the National Park Service inaugurates its second century with a fine art photographic exhibit at Harvard’s Fruitlands Museum titled “Find Your Park: National Parks in New England,” which includes several large-scale photographs by New York artist Xiomaro. The group display is open through March 19, 2017.

Xiomaro (pronounced “SEE-oh-MAH-ro”) is an internationally-recognized artist, writer and speaker whose photography has been covered by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, CBS Eyewitness News and The Huffington Post. His photography has been widely exhibited at Harvard University, Long Island Museum, Fraunces Tavern Museum, African Burial Ground National Monument, Siena Art Institute (Italy) and by members of Congress. Xio’s commissions for the National Park Service include the New England National Scenic Trail in Massachusetts as well as the Brookline home and office of Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Boston’s Emerald Necklace.

The exhibit, guest curated by Rebecca Migdal, was developed in partnership with Freedom's Way National Heritage Area and with additional support from Artscope Magazine. To showcase the beauty of New England and the important work being done to preserve and promote the national parks, Migdal selected four super-sized photographs by Xiomaro. The images, on public display for the first time, are hung from the ceiling so that visitors can “walk through” the parks to explore their cultural, historical and natural wonders.

Two images Xio created under a commission from Boston Harbor Islands National Recreational Area show the range of historical and scenic diversity that can be encountered. One photograph depicts a dramatically forlorn Civil War hospital on the prison grounds of Fort Warren on Georges Island – its most famous captive being the Confederate Vice President. Another is an inviting seaside view lined with colorful Adirondack chairs against the backdrop of a newly restored World War II army chapel on Peddocks Island.

Xio’s commission for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's house, a national historic site in Cambridge, produced a pensive view of the entry hall where the world-renowned poet and abolitionist greeted dignitaries of his day. Another commissioned photograph shows J. Alden Weir’s painting studio where he created works that are now at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and other world-class museums. His homestead became Weir Farm National Historic Site, Connecticut’s first national park unit and the only one in the country dedicated to American Impressionist painting. It is also where Xio began his career as an Artist-in-Residence and continues as a Visiting Artist.

The National Park Service (NPS) officially turned 100 on August 25, 2016 and, with this exhibit, is looking ahead to the next century of stewardship and opportunities for public engagement. The NPS covers more than 84 million acres and includes 410 sites. Fruitlands Museum, founded in 1914 by Clara Endicott Sears, takes its name from an experimental utopian community established on the site in 1843. In addition to the exhibit, the art museum includes a collection of over 100 Hudson River School landscape paintings by artists such as Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church.
 
 
 
 
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2017-01-27

12476 - 20170430 - SFMOMA presents "diane arbus: in the beginning" in the new Pritzker Center for Photography - San Fransisco, CA - 21.01.2017-30.04.2017

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Diane Arbus, Girl with a pointy hood and white schoolbag at the curb, N.Y.C. 1957; courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved.
 
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents the West Coast debut of the acclaimed exhibition diane arbus: in the beginning, on view January 21 through April 30, 2017. Organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, diane arbus: in the beginning considers the first seven years of the photographer’s career, from 1956 to 1962. Bringing together over 100 photographs from this formative period, many on display for the first time, the exhibition offers fresh insights into the distinctive vision of this iconic American photographer. The exhibition is on view in the museum’s new Pritzker Center for Photography, made possible by the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund. SFMOMA is the only American venue other than The Metropolitan Museum of Art to present this exhibition.  
A lifelong New Yorker, Diane Arbus (1923–1971) found the city and its citizens an endlessly rich subject for her art. Working in Times Square, the Lower East Side and Coney Island, she made some of the most powerful portraits of the 20th century, training her lens on the pedestrians and performers she encountered there. This exhibition highlights her early and enduring interest in the subject matter that would come to define her as an artist. It also reveals the artist’s evolution from a 35mm format to the now instantly recognizable and widely imitated look of the square format she adopted in 1962.

Although this period was exceptionally fruitful—nearly half the photographs that Arbus printed during her lifetime were produced during these years—the work has remained little known. It was only after her death that much of it was brought to light. The exhibition includes many lesser-known published works, including Lady on a bus, N.Y.C. 1957; Boy stepping off the curb, N.Y.C. 1957–58; The Backwards Man in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1961; and Jack Dracula at a bar, New London, Conn. 1961. It also highlights previously unknown additions to her body of work, including Taxicab driver at the wheel with two passengers, N.Y.C. 1956; Woman with white gloves and a pocket book, N.Y.C. 1956; and Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960.

The majority of the photographs included in the exhibition are part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s vast Diane Arbus Archive, acquired in 2007 by gift and promised gift from the artist’s daughters, Doon Arbus and Amy Arbus.

The exhibition has been complemented by a gallery featuring works by artists Arbus admired as well as by her contemporaries in New York including Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, William Klein, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, August Sander, Weegee and Garry Winogrand, all drawn from SFMOMA’s photography collection.

diane arbus: in the beginning builds on SFMOMA’s longstanding commitment to the artist, including the groundbreaking exhibition Diane Arbus Revelations, presented in San Francisco from October 2003 through February 2004. Co-organized by guest curator Elisabeth Sussman and Sandra S. Phillips, curator emerita of photography at SFMOMA, Diane Arbus Revelations brought together approximately 200 of the artist’s most significant photographs—making it the most complete presentation of her work ever assembled. The exhibition traveled to six additional venues in the United States and Europe.

“We’re so pleased to bring Arbus’s work back to the Bay Area,” said Corey Keller, curator of photography at SFMOMA. “Arbus made some of the most potent photographs of the 20th century, and this exhibition provides a unique opportunity to consider the origins of her vision and to explore a tremendously rich but largely unfamiliar body of early work.”

SFMOMA has been collecting and exhibiting photography since its founding in 1935 and was one of the first American art museums to do so. An independent department was established under the direction of Van Deren Coke in 1980. Under the leadership of Sandra S. Phillips, who joined SFMOMA in 1987 and now serves as curator emerita of photography, the collection has grown exponentially in size and quality, and the program, based on a philosophy of collecting and interpreting the photographic medium in all its richness and complexity, has earned an international reputation. Clément Chéroux will join the department as senior curator of photography in early 2017.

Today the photography collection numbers more than 17,000 objects, and is the largest collection at the museum. Its strengths include outstanding examples of work by West Coast modernist masters such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and their counterparts on the East Coast, most notably Alfred Stieglitz and Charles Sheeler. A small but important group of European modernist works by Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, among others, represents another highlight of this period. The collection also demonstrates a deep commitment to the work of major 20th- and 21st-century figures, including Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Lewis Baltz, Rineke Dijkstra, William Eggleston and Larry Sultan.

SFMOMA is particularly renowned for its thematic exhibitions, presenting photography as a vital modern visual language. This strong interest in photography’s social and cultural importance and this pioneering commitment to examining the medium’s distinguishing—and changing—characteristics continues to grow in relevance, as newer generations and evolving technologies challenge the very definition of photography as never before.
 
 
 
 
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2017-01-26

12475 - 20170409 - KMAC presents works by acclaimed Chicago artist William J. O'Brien - Louisville, KY - 21.01.2017-09.04.2017

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Untitled, 2015. Felt on felt. 72x72 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
 
KMAC Museum presents a new exhibition, William J. O'Brien | Oscillates Wildly, curated by Joey Yates, on view January 21-April 9,2017. This is KMAC's first solo exhibition following a full renovation completed in July 2016. KMAC will host an artist talk during which O'Brien will speak about his career and process on Saturday, January 21 at 3:30pm. 
William J. O'Brien shifts effortlessly from creating ceramic and steel sculptures to working with textiles, drawing, and painting. This dynamism is evident in the nearly 90 works featured in the exhibition, which fill the second floor gallery of the museum. Central to his varied practice, and equally to the province of craft itself, is a dexterous manipulation of multiple materials and forms venerating handmade labor and other meaningful connections with the physical world.

"In our modern lexicon of creative activity, O'Brien is commonly considered a maker, someone who is engaged in a thoughtful, physically rigorous, and oftentimes improvisational approach to materiality and process," said KMAC Curator Joey Yates. "In this effort, William J. O'Brien offers a prime example of the role craft plays in the critical dialogue about contemporary art, which the KMAC exhibition program explores."

Oscillating between two-dimensional surfaces to three-dimensional structures, his work explores varying relationships between color, form, pattern and texture, balancing tensions amid abstraction and figuration, chaos and control, absurdity and logic.

Drawing inspiration from an array of historical art movements, O'Brien creates work that blends conventional craft techniques with various methods of spontaneous mark making. Ignoring the hierarchies that were previously meant to segregate artistic practice, O'Brien obscures the distinctions between the skilled and amateur artist. Our conceptions of genre and history are collapsed into an idiosyncratic process where we see O'Brien's blurring the modern narratives of Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and the decorative arts, as well as more vernacular and intuitive forms of art like folk art of the American South and Art Brut.

KMAC donors and members are invited to preview the exhibition on Friday, January 20 from 6-8pm. Prior to the artist talk on Saturday, January 21 at 3:30pm, there will be an O'Brien inspired Family Fun Day from 11am-3pm, offering free family art making activities for all ages. Event details and more information can be found at KMACmuseum.org.

William J. O'Brien | Oscillates Wildly is generously supported by Brown Forman, Republic Bank, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Morgan Stanley, Mary and Ted Nixon, and Stephen Reily and Emily Bingham.

William J. O'Brien received his BA in Studio Art from Loyola University in Chicago, and his MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 2007 he has had several solo exhibitions at the Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago and The Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York where his most recent body of work featuring new sculptures in bronze will be on view in a show titled The Protectors from January 5 - February 4, 2017. In 2014 he had his first major survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, curated by Naomi Beckwith. His work is included in several private and public collections including the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio; Perez Art Museum Miami, Florida; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Hara Museum of Art, Japan; and the Art Institute of Chicago, amongst others. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
 
 
 
 
 
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2017-01-25

12474 - 20170402 - The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents "FOCUS: Stanley Whitney" 21.01.2017-02.04.2017

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Stanley Whitney, SunRa 2016, 2016. Oil on linen, 96 x 96 inches. Courtesy of team gallery.
 
Since the mid-1970s, Stanley Whitney has investigated the intricate possibilities of color and form in the realm of abstract painting. Whitney's signature style features multicolored, irregular grids on square canvases. Taking the essentialist grid of minimalism as his cue, his configurations are loose, uneven geometric lattices comprised of vibrant stacked color blocks that vary in hue, shape, and the handling of the paint. Whitney also utilizes color as subject, and his paintings often refer to literature, music, places, and other artists, connections that are bolstered in his titles.
Working without preparatory materials, Whitney combines balance and intuition in his approach to painting, as each color block is painted sequentially in relation to the ongoing arrangement. This process is expressive, improvisational, and can be linked to jazz, which continually inspires the artist. As Whitney has stated, "The way that it's a little offbeat, polyrhythmic; the way that things move. Nothing's straight. Nothing's regular. Everything's a little crooked. And I think that's really what comes out of the music. It comes out of the beat, it comes out of how people walk, the way people wear their hat, just a little off. I think about all of those kinds of things and want them in the painting."

FOCUS: Stanley Whitney features new work by the artist, including three large-scale paintings.

Stanley Whitney was born in Philadelphia, and lives and works in New York and Parma, Italy. He earned a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University. Whitney has exhibited across the globe, having held solo exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Lagorio Arte Contemporanea, Brescia, Italy; Architettura Arte Moderna, Rome; Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, New York; University of Dayton, Ohio; University of Rhode Island, Kingston; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. Whitney was in the 50th Venice Biennale. He has also been included in many group shows at such venues as the Camden Arts Centre, London; American Academy in Rome; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; University of Chicago; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; and the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach. His prizes include the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize in Painting, American Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
 
 
 
 
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2017-01-24

12473 - 20170312 - Winslow Homer engravings exhibition at the Butler Institute of American Art - Youngstown, OH - 22.01.2017-12.03.2017

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Winslow Homer, Snap the Whip, 1873.
 
An exhibition of two-hundred thirty celebrated prints by American icon Winslow Homer at the Butler Institute’s Trumbull location opening Sunday, January 22, 2017. Winslow Homer, arguably the most popular artist and illustrator of nineteenth century America, and one of the most important American artists of all time comes to the Butler Institute of American Art. Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction, includes 230 wood engravings on loan from Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions, Laguna Niguel, California, has been in the planning for more than twenty years beginning in1995 when curator Reilly Rhodes, then director of the National Art Museum of Sport took notice of the immense range of material that was available to museums and collectors through searching the inventory of rare book and print shops in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The initiative to collect Homer’s engravings was first brought to the attention of Mr. Rhodes through the advice and recommendation of D. Dodge Thompson, Chief of Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington who was at the time advising the National Art Museum of Sport on acquisition possibilities for building a permanent collection of sporting art.

“The opportunity for museums to showcase these works on paper offers enormous storytelling potential that people of all ages can appreciate and enjoy,” said Rhodes. “Homer is easy to understand and to connect with. The content is straightforward and masterfully expressed. There was never any doubt, even in his youth, that Homer was a highly gifted and talented artist among his peers.”

In his lifetime, Homer did for painting what Walt Whitman did for poetry, and what Brahams did for music. He redefined the rules in terms of style, subject matter and message. The warmth and charm with which he interpreted American experiences has since, enchanted generation after generation. His best-known early paintings and illustrations including Snap-the-Whip, The Noon Recess, Gathering Berries, and Waiting for a Bite are among the engravings on view at the Butler Institute’s Trumbull location through March 12, 2017.

The exhibition Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction provides a rare opportunity to view this extensive collection of engravings produced by Homer between the ages of nineteen and thirty-nine, from 1855 to 1875—one third of the artist’s creative career. Three of his early works include music sheet covers (lithographs) that he produced as an apprentice artists working in Boston. At the age of nineteen he left Boston for New York to work as a free-lance artists making wood engravings for the pictorial press such as Harper’s Weekly and Ballou’s Pictorial. Homer also focused attention on book illustrations for poets and writers, an area that is seldom discussed or mentioned in exhibitions of Homer’s art.

The exhibition is presented in a manner that shows Homer’s themes and subjects inclusive of seaside activities, city and rural life moving from field to factory prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. The groupings of prints on view are arranged into sub-themed categories such as Leisure Time, The Sporting Life, Holidays, The War Years, Seaside Views, America’s Youth, Rural America, The Changing Role of Women, Fashion and Style.

The Civil War changed everything for Homer and for America. The innocence of America was also gone and people were turning away from the problems of reconstruction in favor of building wealth and expanding freedoms, pursuing personal interest and taking advantage of the opportunities that American industry began to find with a revised industrial revolution. America was expanding to the west, and the influx of immigration brought in a renewed workforce that was necessary to support labor needs. The civil war left a huge void in terms of lost lives and immigrants were welcomed and needed. With more than 600,000 lives lost in the war, women were left with task that men performed in the pre-war era. Women began to work in factories, teach school and even farm when no one else was left to perform the work. Homer produced several illustrations showing women at work on the farms and working in the textile mills. America’s youth was not spared, there were chores and jobs for children even in the mills that Homer illustrates in his post-war engravings.

Perhaps the most striking feature of this exhibition is Homer’s images of America’s youth—children at play and actively engaging each other in explorations that stimulated an excitement and perhaps above all, a hope for the future. He produced the majority of these images in the mid-1870s, though one can see the continuing interest in much of his earlier work. Some of the best and most important examples include Snap-the-Whip, The Noon Recess, The Nooning, The Last Days of Harvest, and The Morning Bell, all made in 1873, and all relating to his school subjects as well as Ulster County, New York.

Many of Homer’s late period wood engravings and watercolors from the 1870s reveal hints of the painter to come in the late 19th and early 20th century while Impressionism in Europe and the Hudson River scenes in American painting was still flourishing. Homer, though keenly aware of other art movements, was never associated with or part of any art movement. He directed his attention and focus on his own ideas and to his credit and benefit, spent the majority of his creative work to drawing, making his first serious watercolors and oil paintings when he was almost thirty years of age. Historians note that Homer was largely self-taught, though his mother was an amateur, yet skilled watercolorist

As popular as Homer has remained through the years, it is surprising to many to learn that it was not until the early 1950s that his work as an illustrator was rediscovered or taken seriously as a collectable art form. The influential American art historian Lloyd Goodrich wrote extensively about Homer and the importance of his wood engravings as a valued art form that had been overlooked by scholars, museum curators and art collectors. Goodrich organized an important exhibition of Homer’s engravings for the Whitney Museum of Art in New York. Soon after, several American art and history museums began to aggressively collect these prints, realizing that Homer’s engravings were printed mainly on newsprint and illustrated in some of the most popular weekly newspapers and journals published between 1857 to the mid-1870s. Some were published in rare limited edition books through the 1880s.

Extensive collections of Homer's engravings are today included in such distinguished museums as The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, The Butler Institute of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art , and several others including university and college museum collections.

Homer's prints provide valuable insight into his artistic achievements and a view of the society and times in which he lived. As social commentary, Homer's illustrations are recognized by historians and scholars as being important visual documents, that accurately depicted scenes of a young nation that was evolving into an influential and industrial world power.
 
 
 
 
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