Featured Exhibitions
Becoming John Marin: Modernist at Work
The exhibition Becoming John Marin: Modernist at Work, which appeared at the Arkansas Arts Center from January 26 to April 22, 2018, invited you to look over the shoulder of American modern artist John Marin (1870–1953) to see his use of drawings and sketches. Most of his informal drawings and watercolors had rarely been seen outside his studio. These very personal images let us travel with Marin through the crowded streets of New York, along the rocky shores of Maine, and into the cluttered creative space of his studio.
The exhibition displayed works from the 290-work John Marin Collection at the Arkansas Arts Center (given by the late Norma Marin), in conjunction with loans from the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Phillips Collection, the Colby College Museum of Art, Meredith Ward Fine Art, and an anonymous lender. Curator Ann Prentice Wagner and a skilled team of museum professionals brought the ambitious project to fruition. The exhibition was designed by Keith Melton. See the Videos page to watch talks related to the Marin exhibition.
The exhibition was sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation, Luce Fund in American Art, the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation, Windgate Charitable Foundation, in memory of John R. Fletcher by Judy W. Fletcher, Laura Sandage Harden and Lon Clark, JCT Trust, Philip R. Jonsson Foundation, Holleman & Associates, P.A., Barbara House, Mid-Southern Watercolorists.
Herman Maril: The Strong Forms of Our Experience appeared at the Arkansas Arts Center January 27 – April 16, 2017. It was previously seen at the University of Maryland Art Gallery and later at the Cahoon Museum on Cape Cod.
Herman Maril (1908-1986) is known through his paintings, drawings and prints – spare but evocative modernist images of the Maryland countryside, street corners in his home city of Baltimore, his family’s homes, and the Cape Cod shores where he spent his summers. Maril’s oil paintings are his most famed works. However, this exhibition focused on the large and important body of art he created on paper throughout his career. The drawings, watercolors, acrylic paintings on paper, and prints featured in this exhibition were generously loaned to the Gallery by the Herman Maril Foundation. Ann Prentice Wagner conducted in depth research to tell Herman Maril’s story in the exhibition and the book of the same title. She was the first Maril scholar to tap into the extensive archival resources of the Herman Maril Foundation, in addition to the resources of the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Archives of American Art.
The 2018 exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center, A Luminous Line: Forty Years of Metalpoint Drawings by Susan Schwalb, traced the career of contemporary artist Susan Schwalb. The 35-work exhibition surveyed Schwalb’s career, beginning in 1977. Dubbed “the pied-piper of silverpoint,” Schwalb has helped to spark a revival of interest in metalpoint by both artists and scholars. Throughout her career, Schwalb has transferred these traditional Renaissance media to the realm of abstraction, while retaining their beauty and serenity.
Metalpoint drawings are made using a metal stylus on paper prepared with a slightly abrasive ground. Silver is the most popular metal, tarnishing to an attractive warm color on the paper. In her work, Schwalb uses a variety of metals – silver, bronze, copper and more – and a variety of drawing tools, including wires and flat pieces of metal. Schwalb also uses graphite, gouache and gold leaf throughout her work.
Metalpoint has a long and storied history. The 2015 exhibition Drawing in Silver and Gold, mounted by the National Gallery of Art and the British Museum, surveyed use of the medium, beginning with Renaissance artists like Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci and ended with works by Schwalb.
“Seeing Susan Schwalb’s luscious abstract metalpoint drawings will make any viewer admire the medium and any artist want to try it,” said Ann Prentice Wagner. A Luminous Line: Forty Years of Metalpoint Drawings by Susan Schwalb was organized by the Arkansas Arts Center in partnership with Garvey|Simon, New York. The exhibition was sponsored by Ginanne Graves Long and Brenda Mize.
Jon Schueler: Weathering Skies, presented 26 watercolors from the Jon Schueler Estate and the Arkansas Arts Center in an exhibition that explored the artist’s fascination with the power of the sky. Before he was a painter, Schueler navigated a B-17 bomber during World War II. The sky became a place fraught with anxiety and yet incredible beauty and meaningful. Only after the war did Schueler train as an artist at the California School of the Fine Arts. He became one of the 20th Century’s second-generation Abstract Expressionist painters known for filling his canvases with abstractions inspired by the atmospheric sky.
Weathering Skies features watercolors made in Scotland and in Connecticut between 1967 and 1969. All but one of the watercolors in the exhibition is from the Schueler Estate. The remaining work, Weathering Skies, is a previously un-exhibited work in collection of the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation.
Jon Schueler (American, 1916-1992) was a second-generation Abstract Expressionist. Schueler was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1916 and received his BA and MA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Following World War II, where he flew missions over France and Germany as a B-17 navigator, he attended the California School of Fine Arts (1948-51) where he was surrounded by group of historically important artists who led to the development of the Bay Area Figurative Movement of painting. Schueler moved to New York in 1951, which became his base until his death in 1992. However, these years were dotted with visits to Mallaig, Scotland, where the light and weather of the area became the hallmark for his signature style.
The exhibition, co-organized by the Jon Schueler Estate and the Arkansas Arts Center, traveled to the Wyoming University Art Museum in 2017. The exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center was designed by Keith Melton. For additional information about Jon Schueler please visit www.jonschueler.com
Industrial Beauty: Charles Burchfield’s Black Iron
The massive counterweights of a railroad drawbridge over Buffalo Creek fascinated watercolorist Charles Burchfield as he traveled to the Port of Buffalo in 1933. The artist promised himself he would one day depict the bridge. In 1935, he said, “I made one trip in to look over the subject, and received a new thrill. . . What a delight! What a joy it was! The subject ‘over-powered me’” He recalled, “It was difficult working, that first day, but I rejoiced in all the handicaps . . . the ground had not settled yet from the spring thaw, and where I stood it was all sand; engrossed in my work I did not know how treacherous it was until I went to step backward and could not move my feet . . .” A bridge worker had to rescue the artist, who was captivated, indeed.
Burchfield’s devoted labor resulted in one of his greatest watercolors, Black Iron. This exhibition celebrated the arrival of this masterpiece in Arkansas as a gift from Hope Aldrich in honor of her father, John D. Rockefeller, 3rd. This generous donation also includes seven sketches and a sheet of notes from which the artist’s commentary above is quoted. The exhibition Industrial Beauty set this material in a wider context with works from the Arts Center’s own collection, as well as loans from DC Moore Gallery, the Burchfield Penny Art Center, The Rhode Island School of Design, Valparaiso University, and an anonymous lender.
The exhibition was curated by Ann Prentice Wagner, PhD, designed by Keith Melton, and sponsored by Chucki and Curt Bradbury, Terri and Chuck Erwin, Friday, Eldredge & Clark, LLP, Nancy Eakins Dickins, The Philip R. Jonsson Foundation, and Mr. Tim Jordan.
Little Rock Culture Vulture Exhibition Review
12th National Drawing Invitational: Outside the Lines
Arkansas Arts Center, July 18 – October 5, 2014
Drawings abound in the city of Little Rock. On the walls of restaurants, offices, private homes, galleries and throughout the Arkansas Arts Center itself, drawings take pride of place much as paintings do in other cities. The efforts of Arts Center founding director Townsend Wolfe and his successors have made drawings an integral part of Little Rock’s soul. The outstanding drawings collection has been growing since its foundation by Wolfe in 1971. Works by top artists have come in from the dealers and studios all over the United States. The permanent collection’s drawings range from European old master works to drawings right off of current artists’ drawing boards. Since 1986, the Arts Center has taken an active role in American contemporary art by inviting the most deserving artists from all over the country to exhibit recent drawings in the National Drawing Invitational.
The 2014 12th National Drawing Invitational featured eight distinctive artists from the Mid-Atlantic region. Each finds a different way of imbuing marks on paper (or Mylar or walls or vinyl) with meaning. The sub-title of this exhibition, Outside the Lines, opens the question of how these artists and their creations break old barriers of graphic custom. These works investigate how artists draw and how viewers respond to drawn lines. This exhibition challenged us to reconsider the nature of drawing.
The exhibition was curated by Ann Prentice Wagner, PhD, and Laura Roulet, designed by Keith Melton, and sponsored by Landers Fiat. The web site was designed by Alex Moomey.
