News

Jackson Hole, WY – The National Museum of Wildlife Art announced the acquisition of five new works of contemporary art chosen at the Blacktail Gala on Saturday, February 24.

The new works include Wendy Klemperer’s metal sculpture “Barney,” Jane Rosen’s painting using coffee, Korean watercolor, and ink “Mantle,” Sarah Hillock’s “Anthony and Camilla, Part II,” Peter Haslam-Fox’s watercolor “Hooded Hawk,” and an untitled ceramic plate, created by Pablo Picasso.

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RE:CONSTRUCTION
January 27-March 31, 2018

A group exhibition that explores and encourages the dialogues between form and function, art and design, abstraction, extraction and representation by bringing together three-dimensional works by Donna Green, Sheila Hicks, Bo Joseph, Julia Kunin and Thaddeus Wolfe; paintings and works on paper by Ruth Asawa, Nicolas Carone, Claire Falkenstein, Leon Polk Smith, André Lanskoy and Julian Stanczak; with furniture by Marcel Gascoin.

The University of Maine Museum of Art has acquired a painting by artist Suzy Spence. Suzy Spence’s 2017 flashe painting on paper, Death (Rider), was acquired by the Museum for its permanent collection.

Bo Joseph: House of Mirrors
October, 12-November 24 2017

Touchstones, Totems, Talismans: Animals in Contemporary Art

October 13, 2017 - February 11, 2018

Ask the beasts and they will teach you the beauty of this earth. — Francis of Assisi

The inspiration for this exhibit dates back to the 2004 BMAC exhibit Andy Warhol: The Jon Gould Collection. The most commented-on works in that show were the large prints from Warhol’s 1983 “Endangered Species” portfolio. Observing visitors’ reactions to those powerful images, I sensed that their aesthetic experiences were enriched by the deep connections humans have with animals, both domestic and wild.

Depicting animals—as symbols, teachers, muses, companions—connects human cultures across time. Pictures of animals serve as proxies for happiness, distress, or fear. They speak of love, remembrance, and condolence. Whether literal or abstract, animal images call into play both our experiences with the creatures themselves and the often deep-seated characteristics, traits, and qualities we assign to them.

Featuring the work of Walton Ford, Bharti Kher, Colleen Kiely, Stephen Petegorsky, Shelley Reed, Jane Rosen, Michal Rovner, Rick Shaefer, and Andy Warhol, this exhibit offers a mere glimpse into the complexity of human-animal relationships in contemporary art. The selected works are diverse in intention and execution. Some are humorous; others are unsettling. All invite contemplation of the various ways in which animals inhabit our personal experiences, our cultural history, and our common world.

— Mara Williams, Chief Curator

Click here for more information

Touchstones, Totems, Talismans: Animals in Contemporary Art

October 13, 2017 - February 11, 2018

The inspiration for this exhibit dates back to the 2004 BMAC exhibit Andy Warhol: The Jon Gould Collection. The most commented-on works in that show were the large prints from Warhol’s 1983 “Endangered Species” portfolio. Observing visitors’ reactions to those powerful images, I sensed that their aesthetic experiences were enriched by the deep connections humans have with animals, both domestic and wild.

Depicting animals—as symbols, teachers, muses, companions—connects human cultures across time. Pictures of animals serve as proxies for happiness, distress, or fear. They speak of love, remembrance, and condolence. Whether literal or abstract, animal images call into play both our experiences with the creatures themselves and the often deep-seated characteristics, traits, and qualities we assign to them.

Featuring the work of Walton Ford, Bharti Kher, Colleen Kiely, Stephen Petegorsky, Shelley Reed, Jane Rosen, Michal Rovner, Rick Shaefer, and Andy Warhol, this exhibit offers a mere glimpse into the complexity of human-animal relationships in contemporary art. The selected works are diverse in intention and execution. Some are humorous; others are unsettling. All invite contemplation of the various ways in which animals inhabit our personal experiences, our cultural history, and our common world.

— Mara Williams, Chief Curator

Click here for more information

Touchstones, Totems, Talismans: Animals in Contemporary Art

October 13, 2017 - February 11, 2018

Ask the beasts and they will teach you the beauty of this earth. — Francis of Assisi

The inspiration for this exhibit dates back to the 2004 BMAC exhibit Andy Warhol: The Jon Gould Collection. The most commented-on works in that show were the large prints from Warhol’s 1983 “Endangered Species” portfolio. Observing visitors’ reactions to those powerful images, I sensed that their aesthetic experiences were enriched by the deep connections humans have with animals, both domestic and wild.

Depicting animals—as symbols, teachers, muses, companions—connects human cultures across time. Pictures of animals serve as proxies for happiness, distress, or fear. They speak of love, remembrance, and condolence. Whether literal or abstract, animal images call into play both our experiences with the creatures themselves and the often deep-seated characteristics, traits, and qualities we assign to them.

Featuring the work of Walton Ford, Bharti Kher, Colleen Kiely, Stephen Petegorsky, Shelley Reed, Jane Rosen, Michal Rovner, Rick Shaefer, and Andy Warhol, this exhibit offers a mere glimpse into the complexity of human-animal relationships in contemporary art. The selected works are diverse in intention and execution. Some are humorous; others are unsettling. All invite contemplation of the various ways in which animals inhabit our personal experiences, our cultural history, and our common world.

— Mara Williams, Chief Curator

Click here for more information

The Refugee Trilogy is a suite of large-scale charcoal drawings by Connecticut-based artist Rick Shaefer. The works employ the visual language of Baroque painting to express–in a language both familiar and historical–the plight of contemporary refugees, and the persistence of this epic human tragedy across time. The three triptychs, each measuring 96" x 165", are exhibited in a chronology suggested by news reports. Land Crossing, the first of the three, addresses the hazardous journeys faced by refugees fleeing war, famine, drought, or other causes. The second work, Water Crossing, portrays the perilous journeys across open water. The third work, Border Crossing, addresses the conflicts and hostilities faced at borders. In addition to the three triptychs, the exhibition includes seventeen preparatory drawings. In an interpretive space adjacent to the exhibition, visitors may watch short video interviews with Marquette University faculty members–from areas ranging from law to nursing to history–who work on the subject of refugees. Rick Shaefer: The Refugee Trilogy was organized by the Fairfield University Art Museum

Silvermine Arts Center announced today its award winners and finalists in the 67th annual Art of the Northeast Exhibition, Silvermine's signature show, which is open to artists from Maine to D.C.  David Kiehl, Nancy and Fred Poses Curator at the Whitney Museum, served as the 2017 curator.

Kiehl's Best in Show was Fairfield resident Rick Shaefer's large-scale drawing, "Sugar Maple," done on charcoal on vellum on aluminum.

Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today introduces the work of more than twenty exceptional artists in conversation with one another for the first time. With works in a range of media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and drawing, the exhibition showcases a diverse range of unique visual vocabularies within non-representational expression. By highlighting these artists’ individual approaches to form, color, composition, material exploration and conceptual impetus within hard-edge and gestural abstraction, Magnetic Fields provides an expanded history of non-pictorial image and object-making. The exhibition not only celebrates these artists as leaders in the field, but also the enduring ability of abstraction to convey both personal iconography and universal themes.