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New Acquisition at Crystal Bridges Museum
Mark Rothko's 'No. 210/No. 211
(Orange)
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ART:
CRYSTAL BRIDGES
Opened on 11-11-11
Now at 12-12-12
It's Time for an update,
one year later!
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in the heartland of America (Bentonville, AR) one year ago with only 1000 pieces in its collection. Admittedly, most were important works of art!
Now, one year later, the museum’s collection has grown to over 2,040 artworks. Acquisitions over the past year have included sculptures, paintings, media work, and works on paper (including drawings, photographs, watercolors, and prints) all by American artists.
Crystal Bridges' active acquisition program is guided by Executive Director Don Bacigalupi with guidance by the museum curators and its board. Central to the consideration of any acquisition is the museum’s mission to tell the story of America through its great works of art, which includes works by artists with well-known names as well as remarkable works by significant but lesser-known artists. Executive Director Bacigalupi says, "As a young institution, we also have the ability to be flexible as opportunities arise. When we are presented with a great work of art that tells an important part of the American story, we can take action fairly quickly. We were fortunate in our inaugural year to add a number of significant artworks to our collection."
The recent acquisitions include a large, luminous painting by Abstact Expressionist artist Mark Rothko. Also currently being exhibited is a recently acquired early work by glass artist Dale Chihuly.
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Artist: Dale Chihuly
Year: 1969-1971 Medium: Hand-blown colored glass, neon, argon and electrical components |
(Source: Information from Crystal Bridges Press Department's press release)
Additional information about the museum is available online at http://crystalbridges.org.
More notes on recent acquisitions at Crystal Bridges can be found in our Postscript Section at the end of this issue.
ART GIFTS
"Shopping"
PRINTS FOR THE
ART LOVERS
IN YOUR FAMILY
You can now order high quality prints of masterpieces from the Crystal Bridges collection before Christmas 2012, if you place the order on or before Dec. 18, 2012.
To order a print online, go to:
All sale Priced: $149.00 = Large Size: 40 x 32 in, Archival Print, on Cotton Paper.
Other sizes available: 14 x 11 for $29, 20 x 16 for $49, 28 x 22 for $89
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John Singleton Copley
Mrs. Theodore Atkinson Jr. (Frances Deering Wentworth), 1765
Order No: 203152
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Asher B. Durand
Kindred Spirits, 1849
Item No: 203154
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Martin Johnson Heade
Cattleya Orchid, Two Hummingbirds and a Beetle, ca. 1875-1890
Item No: 203159
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Robert Henri
Jessica Penn in Black with White Plumes, 1908
Item No: 203160
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Charles Bird King
Ottoe Half Chief, Husband of Eagle of Delight, ca. 1822
Item No: 203162
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Thomas Moran
Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn, ca. 1862
Item No: 203163
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Maxfield Parrish
The Lantern Bearers, 1908
Item No: 203164
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Charles Willson Peale
George Washington, ca. 1780-1782
Item No: 203165
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Gilbert Stuart
George Washington [The Constable-Hamilton Portrait], 1797
Item No: 203168
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Attributed to Susan Catherine Waters
Portrait of a Girl and Her Dog in a Grape Arbor, ca. 1855-1860
Item No: 203170
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Romare Bearden
Sacrifice, 1941
Item No: 203172
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Arshile Gorky
Composition (Still Life), 1936-1937
Item No: 203176
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Wayne Thiebaud
Supine Woman, 1963
Item No: 203181
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Tom Uttech
Enassamishhinjijweian, 2009
Item No: 203182
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Stuart Davis
Still Life with Flowers, 1930
Item No: 205292
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William Holbrook Beard
School Rules, 1887
Item No: 205447
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Marsden Hartley
Mountains No. 22, 1930
Item No: 204625
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Along the Shore, 1903
Item No: 205447
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Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait
The Life of a Hunter: A Tight Fix, 1856
Item No: 203169
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Winslow Homer
Spring, 1878
Item No: 203161
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Print Production Notes:
All of the above paintings are recreated as digital archival prints, sourced from the original artwork hanging in Crystal Bridges Museum. This is the most accurate way to create a representative reproduction of the original art.
All items are published on archival cotton rag paper, using the highest quality archival inks.
The prints are published with the museum's logo watermark in the border as an authorized reproduction.
To order a print online, go to:
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Until later,
Jack
Postscript:
More about recent acquisitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Ammi Phillips (1788-1865),Woman in Black Ruffled Dress, ca. 1835. Oil on canvas.
Among the recent acquisitions is an iconic portrait by American folk artist Ammi Phillips titled Woman in Black Ruffled Dress, painted ca. 1835. Phillips was born in Connecticut and though he was a prolific artist, with more than 400 paintings now attributed to him, it was not until 1968 that he was positively identified as the artist. Phillips’s earlier works used a soft pastel palette. Later works, such as Crystal Bridges’ new acquisition, used much bolder hues and darker backgrounds. “A self-taught New England portrait painter, Phillips is considered one of the most important folk artists of his era,” said Curator of American Art Kevin Murphy, “which is an area in which we’ve been looking to broaden our offerings.
”Phillips’s Woman in Black Ruffled Dress has recently been installed in Crystal Bridges’ Colonial to Early Nineteenth-Century Art Gallery.
William Wetmore Story (1819-1895), Sappho, 1867. Marble.
Adding a neoclassical presence to Crystal Bridges’ offerings is a nearly five-foot-tall white marble sculpture of the Greek poet Sappho by William Wetmore Story. The poet is seated in a chair with her arms crossed along the chair’s back, her lyre at her side and a pensive expression on her face. Her robe, necklace, and the rose that graces her lyre are rendered in classical detail. This sculpture is scheduled to receive conservation work in the year ahead, as well as a new base, before it will make its public debut.
Miriam Schapiro (b. 1923), A Mayan Garden, 1984. Fabric and acrylic on canvas collage.
Miriam Schapiro is a contemporary artist who lives and works in California. Her shaped-canvas mixed-media work A Mayan Garden has also been added to the Crystal Bridges collection. Schapiro is known as one of the country’s prominent feminist artists. She, along with fellow artist Judy Chicago, was one of the founders of the Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts. A Mayan Garden is one of Schapiro’s “femmages” — mixed-media collage works that draw on techniques traditionally perceived as being the domain of women, such as appliqué and decoupage — and will debut at Crystal Bridges during 2013.
Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975), Tobacco Sorters, 1942/1944. Tempera and oil on panel.
Missouri-native artist Thomas Hart Benton is a well-known regional favorite. Tobacco Sorters was originally commissioned by the American Tobacco Company, which wanted to connect its consumers to the farmers who grew their product. The work is currently displayed as a key component in the museum’s Early Twentieth-Century Art Gallery.
“A larger work than the other Bentons we have in our collection, this immediately filled a niche in our early twentieth-century area,” says Murphy. “It had been in a private collection, and it was important to the owners that it be shared with a larger audience.”
Prints for the People
A large portion of the year’s acquisitions comprise a collection of 468 early twentieth-century prints amassed by a private collector. The collection features artists working in styles that range from Benton’s Regionalism to Charles Sheeler’s Precisionism, as well as all of the major printmaking media: drypoint, etching, engraving, lithography, screenprint, woodcut, and wood engraving. The collection contains artists best known for their work in other media, such as Benton and Sheeler, but also those who chose to express themselves almost exclusively through prints, including Martin Lewis and Benton Spruance. Female artists are prominent, with Ida Abelman, Minna Citron, Mabel Dwight, Jolan Gross-Bettelheim, Riva Helfond, and Bernarda Bryson Shahn represented through at least one, but often multiple, works.
“This acquisition dramatically expands Crystal Bridges’ holdings of prints, opening new avenues for the museum’s ability to interpret the rich history of American art,” said Murphy, who has curated an exhibition from the new collection.
Selected Prints to be featured in Exhibition
A selection of these recently acquired prints will be on view at Crystal Bridges from December 21 through April 22 in a temporary exhibition titled Art Under Pressure: Early Twentieth Century American Prints. These works were created between 1925 and 1945, a time of great social change and hardship for the American people. Printmaking came into its own during the Depression and World War II era as a fine-art medium. Artists who worked primarily in other media often used prints as a means of experimentation or to work out ideas. Other artists whose primary medium was printmaking began to experiment with technique, expanding the limits of the medium to create original artworks that could be inexpensively produced in multiples and distributed. Mail-order art dealers worked with artists to produce limited edition prints and promote them in catalog format from which consumers could purchase a print for a few dollars. It was the first time original artwork was within the financial means of average Americans.
“There are a number of prints that deal with the Depression head on and take an approach that looks at people hard at work and trying to improve their circumstances,” said Murphy. “These are printmakers who themselves were often living at the margins and could really understand their fellow blue-collar workers. The collection represents a moment where the American artist and the American people were in sync in a way that we haven’t seen since the Hudson River School painters, and we don’t see again for another generation.”
(Source: Information from Crystal Bridges Press Department's press release)
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ARTSnFOOD, is an online publication dedicated to "The Pursuit of Happiness, the Arts and Food." ™ All rights reserved. Concept, Original Art, Text & Photographs are © Copyright 2012 Jack A. Atkinson under all International intellectual property and copyright laws. All gallery, museum, fair, auction or festival photographs were taken with permission. Images © individual artists, fabricators, respective owners or assignees.
