Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
Spring 2012
Painting the People: Images of American Life from the Maimon Collection
January 31–May 13, 2012
Francis Luis Mora, Evening News, 1914, oil on canvas. Collection of Lee and Barbara Maimon. Photo courtesy of the James A. Michener Art Museum.
Painting the People features selections from the impressive collection of American Scene painting amassed by collectors Lee (’56, Liberal Arts) and Barbara Maimon. Beautifully complementing the Palmer’s permanent collection of American art, with its strengths in Ashcan realism and early twentieth-century modernism, the Maimon collection includes a diverse array of Depression-era figurative paintings by some of the best-known artists of the period—Thomas Hart Benton, Isabel Bishop, Philip Evergood, Rockwell Kent, Reginald Marsh, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Ben Shahn—as well as notable works by painters whose names may be less familiar to visitors today.
In the interwar years, American artists in great numbers embraced indigenous subjects, celebrating scenes of urban and rural American life in naturalistic, highly legible styles that in some cases were reactions against European modernism and in others were informed by lessons gleaned from avant-garde experimentation. Reflecting the interests of the Maimons, the collection is particularly rich in paintings depicting modern modes of transportation—from ferryboats to subways to city buses—and circus themes, one of the era’s most ubiquitous forms of popular entertainment. Both provide fascinating lenses through which to examine the complex social fabric of American culture in the decades leading up to World War II. Collectively, the Maimon collection reveals the remarkable thematic range of American Scene painting, offering glimpses of the urbanites, miners, pool sharks, prizefighters, immigrants, politicians, carnival barkers, and working women who served as artistic fodder for a host of American artists seeking to document their life and times.
A selection of later works by noted African American artists Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Joseph Delaney, and Jacob Lawrence provides a compelling coda, verifying that the impulse to capture scenes of American life continued well into the second half of the twentieth century.
Painting the People is a reprise with some new additions of an exhibition organized by the James A. Michener Art Museum in 2009. The show is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue authored by Michener curator Brian H. Peterson and an extensive gallery brochure with contributions by Palmer curator Joyce Robinson and graduate assistant Emily Schiller.
Hogarth Restored
February 7–May 13, 2012
William Hogarth, Plate 2 from A Harlot's Progress, 1732, etching and engraving. Gift of Mrs. Francis E. Hyslop Jr., from her husband's collection and given in his memory, 82.48.
William Hogarth was best known during his lifetime, as he is today, for his satirical engravings. They were in high demand throughout his career and were printed in even greater volume, first by Hogarth’s wife and subsequently by several others, for many years following his death in 1764. By the 1790s, the plates had grown so worn that the sheets pulled from them offered only a ghost of the original image. One contemporary noted, “Some of the subjects which are still sanctioned with the name of Hogarth as the designer, are become flat, tame, and uninteresting and, instead of adorning the superb cabinets of taste and opulence, are hardly worthy of admission into the parlour of a common inn.” As a corrective, British printmaker Thomas Cook resolved to re-engrave Hogarth’s entire oeuvre. In 1795, he announced a proposal for the “engraving, printing, and publishing by subscription, a complete edition of the works by that much admired artist William Hogarth,” under the heading Hogarth Restored.
Appropriating the title of Cook’s project, this exhibition examines the younger artist’s effort in the light of Hogarth’s originals, including the full set of what may be his most illustrious work, the Marriage A-la-Mode of 1745. Also on view are examples from, and after, three of Hogarth’s progresses: The Harlot’s Progress (1732), The Rake’s Progress (1735), and The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751).
Me, Myself, and the Mirror: Self-Portraits from the Permanent Collection
February 7–May 27, 2012
Benton Spruance, Self-Portrait at Stone, 1942, lithograph. Purchased with funds from the Art Objects Endowment, 2008.72.
Historically, self-portraiture has been a mode of art making that can range from the intensely private and introspective to the declamatorily public and self-promoting. On either end of the spectrum, the genre has afforded artists the opportunity to explore their profession and their practice as well as the particulars of their appearance as they ponder the mirrored reflection of their artistic gaze.
This intimate exhibition of self-portraits from the permanent collection spans more than a century, from an ambitious, yet nuanced, early etching by Käthe Kollwitz to a recent reduction linocut by Chuck Close that is arguably more about process and printmaking than an individual psyche. Highlights include a romanticized, tenebrous photogravure by Edward Steichen; a remarkable and revealing studio portrait by Philadelphia printmaker Benton Spruance; and a group of “midlife” self-portraits by Ivan Albright, George Tooker, and Jerome Witkin.
Summer 2012
Color My World: Color Photographs from the Permanent Collection
May 22–August 19, 2012
David Graham, Near Grand Canyon, Arizona, 1986, chromogenic print. Gift of David B. Long, Class of 1990, 99.53.
This exhibition looks at the impulse to color the black-and-white world of photography from the very earliest days of the invention through the gradual embrace of color photography as an artistic medium beginning in the 1970s. A wide range of processes will be included, from hand-tinted tintypes to dye-transfer prints to more recent chromogenic methods.
American Quilts from the Terasaki Collection
June 12–August 26, 2012
Quilt with Harvest Sun Pattern, American, nineteenth or early twentieth century, cotton, pieced. Collection of Etsuko Terasaki. Photo credit: David O. Brown, courtesy of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University.
This exhibition features nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American quilts from the private collection of Etsuko Terasaki. Sophisticated in design, they testify to the timeless human impulse to create order and beauty in our surroundings, with whatever resources available, for utility and for pure visual pleasure.
The exhibition was organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. The exhibition was curated by Cathy Rosa Klimaszewski, Associate Director for Programs / Harriett Ames Charitable Trust Curator of Education.
Protecting Paper at the Palmer
June 19–September 9, 2012
George Harold Fisher, Sketch for Ferris School murals, Communication, 1936, graphite on paper. Gift of Edward Mattil, 2004.37.
Prints, drawings, watercolors, and photographs are highly susceptible to damage from light, humidity, bugs, stuff in the air—and people. This exhibition examines the steps we take to protect our works on paper from harm once they have entered the permanent collection, as well as the conservation efforts we make in order to mitigate whatever damage may have occurred before they were acquired.
Fall 2012
Floating Between Worlds: New Research on Japanese Prints in the Permanent Collection
August 28–December 9, 2012
Photography at the Palmer: A Selection of Gifts
September 18–December 16, 2012
Celebrating Forty Years of Gifts: Works on Paper from the Permanent Collection
September 25, 2012–January 20, 2013
