C Magazine Issue lll Vol llI

EYES ON THE PRIZE Kerry James Marshall Makes His Mark

VAN GOGH TO ROTHKO The Incredible Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

GO WEST! John Mix Stanley and Leon Pomarede on the American Frontier

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MEMBER MAGAZINE

FEB 2015

VOL III ISSUE III01

FOUNDING ENDOWMENTS

N E X T G E N E R AT I O N F U N D

Doug and Shelley McMillon Family Paul and June Carter Family

Jack and Melba Shewmaker Family

The J.M. Smucker Company

Pamela and Wayne Garrison

G LO B A L I N I T I AT I V E F U N D Chuck and Terri Erwin Reed and Mary Ann Greenwood

Stella Boyle Smith Trust Harriet and Warren Stephens

Marvelyn Stout

Windgate Charitable Foundation

SPONSORS

Annenberg Foundation Loreen Arbus Bill and Donna Aquavella Lee and Ramona Bass

Mica Ertegun Avant Mining LLC Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr

Bank of America Bob and Marilyn Bogle Alberto Chang-Rajii

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Terra Foundation for American Art Byron and Tina Trott Jon and Abby Winkelried

Jackye and Curtis Finch, Jr. Hyde Family Foundation John and Marsha Phillips

Robert and Nancy Brooks Paul and June Carter Family ConAgra Foods Greenwood Gearhart Inc.

The Gordon and Llura Gund Foundation Galen, Debi and Alice Havner KFSM-TV CBS Kimberly–Clark

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Mass Market Retailers William Reese Company Harriet and Warren Stephens/Stephens Inc.

AMP Sign and Banner Art Agency, Partners Arvest Bank Avis Bailey Neff and Scarlett Basore Blakeman’s Fine Jewelry Blue Rhino Cambridge Associates, LLC The Coleman Company Daisy Outdoor Products William M. Fuller Foundation

General Mills Meza Harris The Hershey Company Charles and Shannon Holley Kraft Foods Randy and Valorie Lawson/ Lawco Energy Group The Legacy Fayettville Condominiums Lifetime Brands MillerCoors Paul and Karen Mahan

Moon Distributors, Inc. Northwest Arkansas Naturals Pinnacle Car Services Powers of Arkansas Premier Dermatology & Skin Renewal Center Rick and Beverly Chapman Family Riedel, The Wine Glass Company The RoArk Group Roblee Orthodontics Rockline Industries

RopeSwing Andrew and Denise Saul Mark and Diane Simmons Stephen and Claudia Strange Stout Executive Search Tartaglino-Richards Family Foundation Telemundo Demara Titzer TravelHost NWA

FEB 2015

VOL III ISSUE III

The Fine Art of Collecting

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FEA TUR ES

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MEMBER MAGAZINE

The Incredible Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Go West!

16

John Mix Stanley and Leon Pomerade on the American Frontier

Eyes on the Prize

30

Kerry James Marshall Makes His Mark

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DEP ART MEN TS

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C MAGAZINE IS THE MEMBERSHIP PUBLICATION FOR CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART.

Not a Member yet? You may become a Member, or purchase gift memberships, at: CrystalBridges.org/get-involved/Membership.

Member Spotlight

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Eleven

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Museum Store Art 101

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28 29 36 37 38 41

News Acquisitions

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If you have questions about your membership, or wish to reserve tickets to exhibitions or events, you may call our Member Priority Line: 479.418.5728, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Tickets may also be purchased online.

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The Vault Collection Spotlight

Coming Soon Trails & Grounds Education Kids

Back Story Library Celebrations Last Word 03

MEMBER MAGAZINE

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Rod Bigelow DEPUTY DIRECTOR

In the pale light of a new year, as State of the Art is taken down and packed

up, we at Crystal Bridges find ourselves looking at two big, empty galleries and a vault full of artwork to install. There is life after State of the Art, after all, and our curators and preparators have already begun the work of re-configuring and re-installing the Twentieth-Century Art Gallery with objects from our permanent collection. It’s an exciting opportunity to showcase different movements, play up new connections, and take a fresh look at the works in our twentieth-century and contemporary collections, including several newly acquired works.

At the same time, we’re excited about bringing you Van Gogh to Rothko: Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. It is a lively, colorful, and impactful show: an opportunity to stand before works by masters such as Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, and Pablo Picasso and be moved by the physical presence of these objects. It’s so much different from looking at pictures of the work in books, isn’t it?

Sandy Edwards DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Diane Carroll EDITOR

Linda DeBerry CREATIVE SERVICES MANAGER

One thing I hope State of the Art does for all of us is to remind us that those superstars whose works we see on the walls of museums were also regular people, just like those earnest, passionate artists whose work we experienced in that remarkable exhibition State of the Art. There’s something of the artist—of the hand that made them—preserved in the work that touches us very directly. It speaks to our shared humanity, to the universality of our experience. I hope that, having come to know the artists of State of the Art, we are able to tap into that experience more fully.

Also in this issue, we bid farewell to former Executive Director and President Don Bacigalupi, the man who led Crystal Bridges to where it is today: a national museum with something important to say about the state of art in America, the purpose of museums, and issues like accessibility, community, and outreach.

Don’s vision and leadership—as well as his humor, openness, and scholarship— are a big part of what has shaped Crystal Bridges in these, our tender formative years. Naturally, we wish him well on his exciting new endeavor: opening yet another new museum, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago, with no less luminary a patron and partner than George Lucas. We will miss him, however. And I for one feel honored to have worked with him.

EDITOR Linda DeBerry

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2013

Anna Vernon DESIGNERS

Erick Dominguez Laura Hicklin CONTRIBUTORS

Chad Alligood Don Bacigalupi Mindy Besaw Rod Bigelow Beth Bobbitt Diane Carroll Case Dighero Mary Douthit Emily Ironside Brandon Mason Catherine Petersen Jeanne Vockroth EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Alison Nation PHOTOGRAPHY

Marc Henning Timothy Hursley Stephen Ironside Dero Sanford MEMBERSHIP & DEVELOPMENT

Ana Aguayo Robyn Alley Emily Ironside Anne Jackson Jamey McGaugh Jo-Ann Murcho Hannah Nestor Judy Plum Carly Scheibmeir Jill Wagar

Environmentally friendly 100% Recycled (post-consumer waste) Made with renewable energy Acid Free

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If you’re not getting special announcements, event reminders, and our eNewsletter, then the answer is no.

Don’t miss a thing.

Send your email address to embership@crystalbridges.org 04

One of the benefits of certain levels of Museum membership is the opportunity to travel with Crystal Bridges leadership, gaining unique insights from the pros as well as exclusive opportunities.

Eureka Springs, Arkansas

CR(EAT)E EUREKA » MARCH 14-15, 2015 Join Crystal Bridges Director of Culinary Case Dighero to experience the Eureka Springs arts and culinary scenes with artistled studio tours, special events at some of the city’s unique landmarks like The Queen Anne Mansion, and a one-of-a-kind dining experience at Castle Rogue’s Manor. Enjoy an overnight stay in the charming suites and cottages at The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow and Eureka Zen. This opportunity is available for Contributing Members and individual donors giving $500 or more annually.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

MAY 1-2, 2015 Join Crystal Bridges Director of Facilities and Grounds Scott Eccleston to take in the beautiful gardens of Tulsa. Guests will travel together by bus and enjoy tours of private gardens, including a behind-thescenes garden tour at The Philbrook Museum of Art and additional landscape and architecture delights!

This opportunity is available for Contributing Members and individual donors giving $500 or more annually.

Venice, Italy & Basel, Switzerland

JUNE 2015 This international trip will kick off in Italy for the Venice Biennale, always at the forefront in the research and promotion of new artistic trends. Next, visit Art Basel, the premier international art show for modern and contemporary works, bringing leading galleries from around the world to the heart of Europe.

This opportunity is available for Guild Members and individual donors giving $10,000 or more annually.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TRIP-SPECIFIC TRAVEL FEES, visit CrystalBridges.org/get-involved/membership/travel-program or call Anne Jackson at 479-418-5789.

NEWS

PLANES, TRAINS AND Member Travel AUTOMOBILES Opportunities

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Chicago, Illinois

SEPTEMBER 17-19, 2015 This trip’s focus will be EXPO CHICAGO, the International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art, which takes place each September at historic Navy Pier. EXPO CHICAGO features more than 140 of the leading galleries from around the world and includes a special exhibitions program.

Crystal Bridges Board Member Don Bacigalupi and Curator Chad Alligood will be keynote speakers at the 2015 EXPO event.

In addition to the EXPO, the group will visit private collections in the Chicago area.

This opportunity is available for Circle Members and individual donors giving $1,500 or more annually.

Miami Beach, Florida

DECEMBER 2015 Join us as we explore the nation’s largest contemporary art fair, Art Basel Miami Beach. Discover the treasures of Art Basel, the main fair, as well as many satellite fairs, private collections, and galleries around Miami and Miami Beach. Opportunities abound to enjoy the dynamic and provocative art scene as well as add to your personal collection.

This opportunity is available for Guild Members and individual donors giving $10,000 or more annually.

A NEW LOOK FOR WALKER LANDING The names of donors to the Next Generation Fund, the Museum’s Endowment, have been added to the steps of the amphitheater on Walker Landing. This special thanks offers ongoing recognition for generous gifts of $1 million and above.

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LAYING THE FOUNDATION Reconstruction of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman Wilson House Underway

Check out the latest news, read blog posts, and view videos of the work in progress at CrystalBridges.org/architecture/frank-lloyd-wright

Progress continues on rebuilding this Usonian house, which Crystal Bridges acquired in 2013 in order to preserve it.

After being deconstructed from its New Jersey site and trucked to Arkansas last year by JB Hunt Transport, the house is now being rebuilt adjacent to the trails near the Museum’s south entrance. The foundation was recently poured, and reconstruction is underway toward a mid-year 2015 public opening. Students from the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture have recently completed a pavilion on the grounds near the Bachman Wilson House which will serve as an interpretation center and entryway to the grounds and gardens surrounding the house. Next time you’re visiting the Museum, exit via the south lobby and head east up the hillside to see the location and the progress on the reconstruction.

CRYSTAL BRIDGES WELCOME NEW STAFF MEMBERS Exhibition and Education Team Created

As Crystal Bridges enters its fourth year, a newly-created team withing the Museum has been charged with enhancing the Museum’s current exhibition program to include overseeing internally-curated shows as well as creating exhibitions to travel to other institutions.

Current Museum team member Niki Stewart will lead this group as Director of Education and Engagement. Stewart has been a cornerstone of the Museum leadership team, creating an acclaimed education program as well as managing exhibition logistics. Now in her seventh year at Crystal Bridges, Stewart will launch and lead this focused area in addition to her ongoing role overseeing the Museum’s robust education program.

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Robin Groesbeck has joined the team as Director of Exhibitions and Interpretive Presentations, coming to Crystal Bridges from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. A proven leader in all aspects of exhibition development, Groesbeck has organized more than 60 temporary exhibitions and six permanent exhibitions in a career that has included stints at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Field Museum in Chicago.

Anne Greenwood has also joined the Museum as Interpretation Manager.

During 2013, Greenwood was Crystal Bridges’ inaugural Reese Fellow, focusing on curriculum development in conjunction with the Museum Library. Well versed in an interdisciplinary approach to connecting art with education, Greenwood previously taught at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts in Hot Springs.

Member Survey Results Are In!

TOP 3 REASONS MEMBERS JOIN

This summer, we conducted a survey of Crystal Bridges Members to get a handle on how you feel about your membership, what you like best, and what we can do to keep you coming back.

More than 1,000 Members responded.

We learned that most of our Members are pleased overall with the membership experience and plan to renew—for this we are truly grateful. We also learned that we need to highlight some of the lesser-known benefits—such as the Member Priority Line (479.418.5728)— so Members can get the most out of their membership.

*most who don’t

plan to renew have experienced a life change (moved out of state, retired, job change, etc)

We want to continue serving our Members in the best way possible, and we look forward to inviting you to participate in a follow-up survey in 2015.

#1

free admission to temporary exhibitions

#2

early notification of select programs

We also want to thank those of you who took time to complete this year’s survey.

Your feedback allows us to continually improve the membership program.* Thank you!

97.1 % said YES!*

#1

to support the mission and programming of the Museum

#3

Member Previews/ Last Looks

HOW OFTEN DO MEMBERS VISIT?

TOP 5 MEMBER BENEFITS

#4

C Magazine

17 % 24 % 39 % 19 % 1%

DO THEY PLAN TO RENEW?

+ 10 times/year 6–10 times/year 3–5 times/year 1–2 times/year plan to visit soon

#2

to support arts and culture in the region

#3

to enjoy Member benefits

#5

Member Express Lines lobby, Eleven lunch service, exhibitions

*Have ideas? Email membership@CrystalBridges.org 07

ROD BIGELOW

MOSES AND THE BURNING BUSH

Iconic Keith Haring Painting Joins Crystal Bridges Collection

Two-Headed Figure, 1986

Crystal Bridges has acquired a monumental painting by American artist and activist Keith Haring. The bright and bold acrylic on canvas measures 10’ x 12’ and will arrive at the Museum during 2015.

“Moses and the Burning Bush complements Haring’s TwoHeaded Figure, a sculpture that is already in our collection,” said Rod Bigelow, Crystal Bridges Executive Director.

“Haring insisted that art was for everyone. While the outdoor sculpture generously donated by Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr invites a visceral response, the painting encourages more introspection, offering a different artistic approach which helps broaden our view of Haring as an artist.”

The painting was formerly owned by actor, artist, and filmmaker Dennis Hopper, and has been exhibited internationally. It is currently on loan to the de Young Museum in San Francisco as part of the exhibition Keith Haring: The Political Line, which features more than 130 paintings, sculptures, and drawings. The exhibition explores 08

issues of deep concern to the artist such as human rights, AIDS, racial inequality, and the environment, among others.

“Haring’s imagery is universally recognized as a visual language for the late twentieth century,” said Crystal Bridges Board Member Don Bacigalupi. “Moses and the Burning Bush is artistically significant in that it juxtaposes Haring’s graffitiinspired style with a painterly technique, fixed within a powerful religious narrative.”

Keith Haring (1958–1990) was preeminent among the downtown New York City community of young artists, heavily influenced by urban street culture. During a brief but intense career that spanned the 1980s, Haring’s work was featured in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions. Haring expressed universal concepts of birth, death, love, sex, and war, using bold lines and color that attracted a wide audience. Prior to his death in 1990 from AIDS-related illnesses, Haring established the Haring Foundation and enlisted his imagery to generate awareness about AIDS.

by MEDIA RELATIONS MANAGER Beth Bobbitt

FROM TOP » Keith Haring, Moses and the Burning Bush, 1985, acrylic on canvas. Keith Haring,

“Haring insisted that art was for everyone.

Two-Headed Figure, 1986, polyurethane paint on aluminum. Made possible by Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr.

ACQUISITIONS 08

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ELEVEN

Food is a way of life for Melody Lane. “I’ve always been in the middle of exciting food movements throughout my career,” she says.

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INSIDE THE MIND AND PALETTE of Chef Melody Lane

But it wasn’t just Bentonville’s burgeoning food scene that brought the 57-year-old chef and food activist to Northwest Arkansas, but rather a cultural happening on an international scale: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. She arrived at Crystal Bridges the summer before opening, helping the Museum to build a narrative around the tenets of High South cuisine, and offering much-needed expertise on maneuvering food service in a museum. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, Melody was the chef for the esteemed NelsonAtkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri—a tenure that proved invaluable during the busy inaugural year at Crystal Bridges.

Chef Mel, as her friends and contemporaries refer to her, was practicing the important virtues of sustainability decades before it was trendy to do so, encouraging people to do the right thing through pursuing local farmers, ranchers, and artisans to provide local, organic, and sustainable produce for the museum.

A consummate storyteller, Chef Mel’s life reads like a novel, chock full of deep-sea battles with Moray eels, near-death experiences in the heart of Mexico City, scary and inexplicable ghost stories from the Midwest, and memorable encounters with rock stars such as Debbie Harry, Prince, Patti Smith, and David Byrne.

Perhaps Chef Mel’s greatest virtue is her ability to demystify the art of food and cooking through her daily practices— rallying a team of cooks and chefs who make food accessible through her eyes, mind, and palate. Her culinary skills are exceptional and rare, but it’s the unmatched altruism of her work that makes her the person and chef she is to all of us who know and love her.

by DIRECTOR OF CULINARY Case Dighero 10

MUSEUM STORE 11

STOCKING UP THE MUSEUM STORE Determining what merchandise is appropriate to offer in the Museum Store is a challenging task. We have developed several processes for determining what we will carry.

We look for items we can develop based on the Museum’s permanent collection, architecture, grounds, or a special exhibition.

It might be as simple as a postcard or note card that reproduces an image. Or it could be as complicated as the design we developed for a three-dimensional textile program inspired by the roof-line of Eleven and the Great Hall. We prepare careful analysis and research into these types of programs, and strive to find the best partners for developing and creating this specialty merchandise. As a rule, these are our most successful products, as they are truly unique to Crystal Bridges.

by RETAIL OPERATIONS MANAGER Mary Douthit

We seek out regional artisans whose work meets the standards of the Museum Store.

These talented folks are asked to submit their work through our website. Then our committee meets quarterly to review the submissions. The committee is made up of staff members from the curatorial, educational, and communications departments, as well as from the Museum Store. The submissions must receive 100% approval from all members of the committee before being offered for sale at Crystal Bridges.

We attend both national and regional trade markets where we review miles and miles of vendors and their wares, seeking items that could represent the Museum, our architecture, grounds, or exhibitions in a unique way.

From booksellers to jewelry makers, we look for what we know will best represent the Museum’s mission and vision to our guests. We want each visitor to feel that the Museum Store is an extension of their visit to Crystal Bridges. We hope they will take home some treasured token of their experience that will create a lasting memory for them. It might be a postcard for $1 or a necklace for $50. Whatever it is—a handmade basket from Leon Niehues or a box of notecards featuring the Museum’s architecture—we hope this unique purchase will help foster a lasting curiosity and interest in art, architecture, or our wonderful Museum grounds.

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he astounding collection of artworks featured in the temporary exhibition Van Gogh to Rothko: Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery represents the fruits of the Albright-Knox’s bold policy of collecting cutting-edge contemporary art—most of it before the artists were known and canonized—over a period of 150 years.

Despite the avant-garde nature of the works, the often lesserknown status of the artists, and the bemusement of many museum visitors and board members—a visionary group of directors, patrons, and advisors at the museum took risks on new artists, betting on the possibility of their later acclaim. The policy was summed up by Gordon M. Smith, director from 1955 to 1973, who said “every museum has a duty to act as an enlightened patron of the artist today, who may well be the old master of tomorrow.” For the Albright-Knox, the risks paid off, resulting in an unparalleled collection that simply could not be assembled today.

“This is an institution that, for several generations, collected at the very highest level,” said Crystal Bridges Board Member Don Bacigalupi. “They had good leadership, both on the board and on the curatorial staff, and consequently they acquired the right works at the right time.”

A look at the acquisition dates of many of the works in the exhibition tells the story: the collection team at the AlbrightKnox clearly had its finger on the pulse of the contemporary art scene, and was purchasing works soon after they were produced.

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The de Kooning, painted in 1955, was acquired in the same year; the Jasper Johns was completed and purchased in 1959; and the Mark Rothko also was acquired the same year it was made: 1956. One wonders if some of these works arrived at the museum with the paint still wet.

“They were buying the Abstract Expressionists when nobody was buying Abstract Expressionists, not even individual collectors, let alone museums,” said Bacigalupi. “They were buying for the long horizon. And the proof is in the pudding: here we are 60 years after that moment and they have an extraordinary group of major paintings that is the envy of all institutional collections.”

It’s an indisputable fact that there are a finite number of works by Jackson Pollock or Franz Kline in the world, and most of them are already housed in major institutions. On the rare occasion when a significant work by an American Abstract Expressionist goes on the market, it demands top prices, sometimes recordsetting ones. Not so at the time the patrons and curators for the Albright-Knox were amassing this collection. Because the museum was well attuned to the artists’ world, they were able to seek out the most compelling work before the artists were well-known, and because the Albright-Knox’s acquisition structure for contemporary art was nimble and open to experimentation, they were able to choose the very best work at a small fraction of what it would go for a decade or so later… to say nothing of the incalculable value of the works today.

Andy Warhol, 100 Cans, 1962, oil on canvas, 72 x 52 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1963. © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation of Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

by EDITOR Linda DeBerry

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The Albright-Knox was founded in 1862 as the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, and moved into its present facility in 1905 when John J. Albright donated funds for a new building. The young institution then set out, much as the young Crystal Bridges did, to actively grow its collection. The “artistcentric” approach to acquisition was put firmly in place at the time by director Charles M. Kurtz who wrote: “… the pictures being painted to-day by men of exceptional ability are just as worthy now, when they can be bought for a few hundred dollars each, as they will be when their values will be measured by thousands. A work of artistic merit by an unknown artist always should have precedence over a mediocre work by even the artist of the greatest reputation.”

This is not to say that the museum’s choices went uncontested. Not every member of the board of directors was 100% behind this bold collection policy. When in 1926 museum patron and board member A. Conger Goodyear proposed the acquisition of Picasso’s La Toilette, the directors were shocked by the nudity in the work. Goodyear was voted off the board a few years later, though he continued to provide financial support and artistic guidance to the institution for many years, and would later say “I was quite happy to be ostracized for a Picasso.”

La Toilette was purchased with funds from the institution’s Fellows for Life Fund, created

by Goodyear in 1926 with gifts of $1,000 annually from some 42 donors. Goodyear had established the fund expressly for the purpose of purchasing modern art. The fund was maintained until 1933 and provided for the purchase of modern works by artists such as Paul Cézanne and Auguste Rodin.

THE ROOM In 1939, with funding from inspired patrons, most notably Seymour H. Knox, Jr., and Philip J. Wickser, the museum established the 14

“Room of Contemporary Art.” This small gallery within the museum presented new works, some of which were later purchased with funds donated for that purpose by Knox and others. The acquisitions were guided by a hand-picked committee of five members, including the museum’s director at the time, Gordon B. Washburn. This committee had a measure of autonomy and a shared vision that enabled them to move quickly in making acquisitions.

Remarkably, artworks selected for the Room were acquired on a probationary basis. If the committee felt that any work was not up to standards, they were free to sell it. This policy was a notable departure from traditional museum procedure, in which works are accessioned permanently and require extraordinary measures before they may be deaccessioned from the collection. The Room was thus a nimble sub-section of the museum, with its own funding, its own selection committee, and a certain amount of flexibility in its acquisitions.

Another function of the Room was to offer a friendly space, separate from the main galleries, where the public could experience contemporary art in small bites and get used to it over time. Stephen Bourgeois, a consultant, collector, and gallerist who served as an advisor to the museum regarding its contemporary acquisitions, saw the Room as “a neutral ground of meeting, where Contemporary art can be seen again and again, till the public had adjusted itself to the message.”

“The Room was a bit like the Armory Show,” said Bacigalupi. “When that show hit in 1913, everyone made fun of it and they ran screaming—but a few smart people said: ‘this is worth looking at and we should consider acquiring it.’ That

TOP: Pablo Picasso, La Toilette, 1906, oil on canvas, 59 1/2 x 39 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Fellows for Life Fund, 1926. © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

LEFT: Vincent van Gogh, La Maison de la Crau, 1888, oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 21 1/4 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear, 1966. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

AN ART-CENTRIC INSTITUTION

Giacomo Balla, Dinamismo di un Cane al Guinzaglio, 1912, oil on canvas, 37 5/8 × 45 1/2 × 2 5/8 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear and Gift of George F. Goodyear, 1964. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome.

The Room was a bit like the Armory Show.... when that show hit in 1913, everyone made fun of it and they ran screaming— but a few smart people said: ‘this is worth looking at and we should consider acquiring it.’

DON BACIGALUPI

idea of presenting the most avant-garde work in a sequestered way and then letting time take its course is very smart.”

SOUND ADVICE The remarkable timing of the Albright-Knox’s acquisitions was not simply a matter of luck. Many of the artists in the collection who are brand names in the art world today were, at the time, just individuals in a wide pool of artists struggling to make a name for themselves. Discerning which of these artists to choose for the Room required the advice and expertise of individuals who were well-placed in the art world, knowledgeable, and visionary nearly to the point of prescience. A number of individuals assisted in this capacity over the years, beginning with Bourgeois, who advised the museum as it “entered the great weed-field to pick out the valuable herbs,” as he wrote in 1939 upon the Room’s founding.

The collection also benefitted from dedicated patrons, such as Goodyear, Knox, and others, who lent the museum their own expertise. Many were friends of the artists, and these relationships were invaluable to the collection. Other advisors, such as the wellknown New York gallerist and Buffalo native Martha Jackson, also helped identify emerging stars, foster relationships with artists, and develop the collection over time. “Art is a long curve,” Jackson said. Over the years, that long curve continued through gifts from other collectors and patrons, who were drawn to the AlbrightKnox by its bold acquisition approach or by the collection. Many of these patrons, in addition to providing funding and expertise, also donated all or part of their private collections to the museum.

in the field. The collection philosophy, of buying great works of art regardless of whether or not the artist is a member of the established canon, is also similar. And the recent State of the Art initiative at Crystal Bridges mirrors the daring establishment of the Room of Contemporary Art. While the curators of State of the Art were obliged to travel much further afield in their discovery, the focus on untested, lesser-known artists is the same.

“There’s a story here too for our guests,” Bacigalupi said, “to not be fearful or antagonized by works that you don’t understand yet. Part of our job at the Museum is to keep up with history as its being made, before the canon is written. In State of the Art, the things that may have baffled you and made you scratch your head—those may be exactly the things that, 25 years from now, we’ll say: ‘thank goodness they were ahead of the curve. They were looking in the right place at the right time.’ That’s what’s exciting, that aspect of museum work—you’re participating in the writing of history.”

Van Gogh to Rothko opens February 21 and will be on view through June 1. Members-only previews are scheduled for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. February 20, and 9 to 10 a.m. February 21.

In many ways, the story of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery parallels Crystal Bridges’ own. Both feature collections based on the acquisitions of visionary patrons with the guidance of top experts 15

ART 101

Roxy Paine’s sculpture is made of standard stainless-steel pipes, hand cut and welded by the artist and his workshop. The pipes are then shaped using a hydraulic pipe bender. The work is 47’ 6” tall and has a span of 45 feet.

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Roxy Paine Yield 2011 Stainless steel 47 ft. 6 in. x 45 ft.

The artist calls these sculptures Dendroids, a term that combines dendron, a Greek word meaning “tree,” and –oid, a suffix meaning “form,” suggesting that, although the works may assume the shapes of trees, they are not necessarily representations of trees. They could also be seen as neurons, industrial piping, or vascular systems.

Paine enjoys setting up a tension between the seemingly organic shape of the sculpture and the obviously man-made material of its fabrication. Though the work’s surfaces are polished to a bright shine, Paine deliberately leaves evidence of the industrial origin of his medium in the form of factory markings and visible joints.

The piece’s beauty is not my number one priority. That’s just a by-product. For me, something is beautiful when it embodies an enormous complexity in a seamless whole. ROXY PAINE

from Bomb magazine 107, 2009 “Roxy Paine” by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

The first in the Dendroid series, Impostor, was installed in a forest clearing in Sweden in 1999. Since then, Paine has created more than 30 Dendroid sculptures, several in public collections such as the Seattle Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, among others.

The Dendroid series began as a study of growth patterns in trees, fungus, and plants. From these studies, Paine developed a set of rules or formulas that define particular tree shapes, and he “grows” his sculptures within those parameters, working from sketches and three-dimensional maquettes before moving to full-scale fabrication.

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T H E VA U L T 17

Model space is real space, it’s just small.

CHAD ALLIGOOD

BUILT TO SCALE For the recent exhibition State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, co-curators Chad Alligood and Don Bacigalupi had to create a plan for the placement of more than 220 works of art across two galleries.

There are a number of virtual gallery computer programs to help curators envision exhibitions during the design phase. However, for the early stages of design, when potential configurations are changing frequently and curators need to take in the overall scope of the exhibition, many museums rely on three-dimensional scale models of the galleries into which they place small scale reproductions of the works to be arranged.

“What’s great about a scale model is that you can put your phone into it and take pictures, and that will give you a virtual view of what you would see if you were standing in the gallery,” said Curator Chad Alligood. “We have a computer program that does that, but it’s limited, and it’s not real space. Model space is real space, it’s just small.”

Crystal Bridges already had a scale model of the Temporary Exhibition Gallery, (State of the Art south gallery), but no model of the north gallery (otherwise known as

the Twentieth-Century Art Gallery when it’s housing the permanent collection).

Curatorial Assistant Ali Demorotski was tasked with getting a model made, pronto, so she contracted a professional cabinet maker to build it.

“It ended up being a nine-foot beast,” Demorotski said. “It had to be built to the same scale as the Temporary Exhibition model so that artworks could be moved back and forth between models. But the Twentieth-Century Gallery is a much longer space so… at a 1/2-inch to 1-foot scale…you get nine feet of model.”

Demorotski herself made diminutive scale models in cardboard of all 227 artworks, which the curators could place in the model and move around at will.

Now that State of the Art has run its course at Crystal Bridges, Alligood and his fellow curators are back at their models, making plans for the reinstallation of permanent works in the Twentieth-Century Art Gallery, and designing a layout for Van Gogh to Rothko: Masterworks from the AlbrightKnox Art Gallery, opening in February.

Model Fun in Experience Art Studio Recently a small gallery model has been added to the hands-on activities in the Museum’s Experience Art Studio.

Complete with miniature versions of several favorite sculptures from Crystal Bridges’ collection, the model gives our younger guests an opportunity to arrange their own exhibition. They can even create their own artworks and slip them into the ready-made frames in the gallery!

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In the burgeoning, still-young United States of the nineteenth century, images of the American landscape proliferated; in fact, the first great school of American painting, the Hudson River School, focused primarily on painting the land. It’s an important story we tell in the galleries at Crystal Bridges.

GATEWAY TO THE WEST Leon Pomarede’s View of St. Louis

by CURATOR Chad Alligood

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For these artists—Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, and Albert Bierstadt, among others—the American landscape was ripe with possibility and promise. In 1836, Thomas Cole proclaimed that “the painter of American scenery has, indeed, privileges superior to any other. All nature here is new to art.” The novelty of the American landscape compelled these painters to pursue views of nature that were largely unencumbered by the evidence of human intervention. To find such subjects, they looked to the West—a place marked by visions of unimaginable vastness and possibility.

But the idea of the American West in the middle of the nineteenth century looked a little different than it does today. For these painters, most of whom were denizens of New York City, the

Original Panorama of the Mississippi River, from the Mouth of the Ohio River, to Falls of St. Anthony. The artist toured this massive painting around the country, displaying it on oversized spools and lighting it with gaslights. In the days before movie theaters and amusement parks, viewing a large-scale painting was a relatively common form of popular entertainment.

Pomarede charged a fee to view the all-encompassing work, which depicted pioneer legends, Native American themes, and scenery from the Mississippi River Valley. The panorama burned in a fire in 1850 in Newark, New Jersey. Later in the nineteenth century, Bierstadt also famously toured his aweinspiring, carefully constructed landscapes around the country, offering viewers their first (artfully imagined) glimpses of the grandeur of the American West.

Leon Pomarede, View of St. Louis, ca. 1832-1835, oil on canvas. Photography by Dwight Primiano.

When viewed alongside the idealized, romanticized visions of the West in the pictures of the Hudson River School, a fuller image of the American West emerges: grittier and more human, to be sure, but no less grand or optimistic.

West didn’t necessarily mean the far reaches of the continent.

Rather, “The West” meant immediately west of New York City, in the Catskills of Western New York. The Catskills serve as the setting for some of Crystal Bridges’ most iconic pictures, such as Durand’s Kindred Spirits, a memorial picture to Cole. This artistic investigation of the West as a subject coincided with a general American cultural belief in the concept of Manifest Destiny—that a predestined westward expansion throughout the continent represented the highest ideals of the young nation.

The Hudson River School painters weren’t the only ones who sought to depict the dynamic possibility inherent to the American Western landscape. French-born muralist and panorama painter Leon Pomarede had immigrated to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1830, where he continued the artistic training he had received in Europe. In 1832, he received a commission to produce oil paintings, frescoes, and transparent window paintings for the newly-built Roman Catholic Cathedral in St. Louis, Missouri. While he earned his living from church commissions, the artist also painted a series of important works depicting scenes along the Mississippi River in St. Louis. The only remaining surviving example of this series is View of St. Louis, on view in Crystal Bridges’ Late Nineteenth-Century Art Gallery.

During this period, Pomarede also painted a large-scale panoramic oil painting on canvas—nearly 1,800 feet long—titled Pomarede’s

View of St. Louis, in vibrant contrast to the grandiose views and otherworldly beauty of the Hudson River School paintings, presents a bustling scene of new industry and human intervention in the landscape. Painted from the opposite bank of the Mississippi River in Illinois Town (now called East St. Louis), the painting shows the evolving skyline of the St. Louis riverfront at a time of rapid growth in the local trade economy.

At the dead center of the composition, you’ll find the towering steeple of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, the commission that had brought Pomarede to the city a couple of years prior to painting this picture. A ferryboat docks in the foreground of the painting, carrying people, horses, and cattle—engines driving the growth of a young industrial capital at the frontier of a growing world power. Pomarede captures the beauty and bustle of the emerging city, the character of which was described by a nineteenth-century writer in a similar fashion: “The town shows to a very great advantage when seen from the opposite shore … the site is naturally a most beautiful one, rising gradually from the shore to the summit of the bluff, like an amphitheatre” [Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years (1826)].

Pomarede’s View of St. Louis remains one of the earliest surviving painted views of any city west of the Mississippi, rivaling even the painted cityscapes of George Catlin during this period.

When viewed alongside the idealized, romanticized visions of the West in the pictures of the Hudson River School, a fuller image of the American West emerges: grittier and more human, to be sure, but no less grand or optimistic.

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John Mix Stanley, The Buffalo Hunt, 1855, oil on canvas. Photography by Susan A. Cole, Seattle Art Museum.

THE BUFFALO HUNT

And a Search for a Little-Known Artist

by CURATOR Mindy Besaw

Clouds of dust rise from a tangle of animals and men as three Blackfeet hunters struggle in their pursuit of a buffalo. In the frozen action, one hunter is poised to plunge his spear into a wounded buffalo that has turned to attack a downed horse and fallen rider. Another man on a rearing brown horse aims his bow and arrow at the beast.

John Mix Stanley (1814-1872) completed The Buffalo Hunt in 1855, following several journeys to the American West. Stanley painted the Plains Indian buffalo hunt multiple times, but this version is exceptional for its narrative complexity, sophisticated composition, and its insight into Stanley’s artistic career.

John Mix Stanley was a major figure in nineteenth-century American art, yet until recently, his life and work remained unexplored. Stanley was born in 1814 in Canandaigua, New York, and began his artistic career as an itinerant portrait painter in the Old Northwest (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois) and cities throughout the Northeast. Stanley was an ardent adventurer who

traveled to the American West in the 1840s and 1850s more than any other artist of his time. His extensive travels included the Santa Fe Trail with William H. Emory’s military expedition during the Mexican-American War; forays in California and Oregon Territory; a year in Hawaii, nearly 10 years before its annexation; and as the artist of the northern railroad survey led

by Isaac I. Stevens from St. Paul, Minnesota to Puget Sound in 1853. Throughout his journeys, he painted portraits of AngloAmericans, but ultimately, he went in search of American Indians and frontier themes on an expansive scale.

Stanley assembled a vast collection of American Indian portraits and scenes of daily life, which became the heart of his famous Indian Gallery of over 150 paintings. On several occasions, Stanley lobbied the US Government to purchase his Indian Gallery, with no success, and all but seven of these paintings were tragically destroyed in an 1865 fire at the Smithsonian, where it had been on exhibit. (This same fire also destroyed nearly all of Charles Bird King’s portraits of Native American leaders). Despite this great loss, we can still learn quite a lot about Stanley’s unique approach to American Indian subjects from his existing paintings of Indian life. During his

CRYSTAL BRIDGES WELCOMES MINDY BESAW AS THE NEWEST MEMBER OF THE MUSEUM’S CURATORIAL TEAM Besaw came to Crystal Bridges from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Whitney Western Art Museum, where she was the co-curator of Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley, the first examination of Stanley as an important nineteenth-century American artist.

Previously, Besaw served as curatorial associate at the Denver Art Museum’s Institute of Western American Art. 20

Stanley’s respect for his subject is evident in The Buffalo Hunt. While Stanley was at Fort Benton, Montana in 1853, he had witnessed and admired the hunting skills of the Piegan Indians (one of three major Blackfeet tribes), and had participated in at least one hunt. Yet the painting is not merely documentary. Stanley positioned his figures in a pyramid arrangement, a sturdy composition that has origins in Renaissance art, and a shape further emphasized in the triangular cloud behind the group. At the apex, the hunter on the brown horse rears up with red cloth billowing around him, in a stately pose akin to that of Napoleon crossing the Alps in Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting. The composition and positioning of man and horse imbues the Blackfeet with respect similar to that given to great European leaders through equestrian portraits.

In the mid-1850s, Stanley was living in Washington, DC, and had greatly benefitted from the flourishing art scene in the nation’s capital. He lived for a time with fellow painter Charles Bird King, who operated a gallery and museum. Stanley participated in the Washington Art Association and the National Art Association, and offered painting lessons. During this time, Stanley developed as an artist, improving the narrative complexity, compositions, and technical proficiency in his work.

Stanley’s western journeys provided endless inspiration. In 1854, he created a huge moving panorama he titled Incidents of Stanley’s Western Wilds, which recounted Stanley’s western adventures in forty episodes. The panorama was shown in theaters as popular entertainment in an era before motion pictures. Viewers delighted in the massive painted images while each scene was described by a narrator reading from a program script.

Although the panorama no longer survives, Stanley painted many smaller easel-sized pictures of the same scenes, of which The Buffalo Hunt is one example.

As a key painting in Stanley’s oeuvre, The Buffalo Hunt will soon help to tell the story of Stanley’s important role in creating the legacy of the American West. The painting will be included in the upcoming exhibition, Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley,

co-curated by myself and Peter H. Hassrick, Director Emeritus and Senior Scholar at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

The exhibition will reveal this little-known artist and highlight Stanley’s importance in American art by bringing together, for the first time, nearly 60 works representing every aspect of Stanley’s remarkable artistic career. The accompanying exhibition catalog will be the first in-depth examination of Stanley, and will include five new essays and a selection of more than 200 paintings, watercolors, and drawings with individual catalog entries. Painted Journeys will open June 6, 2015 at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. It will then travel to Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma (October 3, 2015-January 3, 2016); and finally to the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington (February 1 – April 29, 2016).

19th-Century Panoramas Both John Mix Stanley and Leon Pomarede (from the previous article) produced large-scale “moving panoramas” and toured them around the country. These were enormous canvases—as large as ten feet tall and hundreds of meters long—rolled up on two rods like giant scrolls. A mechanical device scrolled the panorama from one side to another so the scenery seemed to move by as if the audience was on a boat traveling down a river, while a narrator described the scenes. Not surprisingly, the Mississippi River was the subject of several of these panoramas, but there were many other traveling panoramas depicting scenes such as the Great Lakes area, Niagara Falls, the Hudson River, and Mammoth Cave; while still others depicted Native American traditions, dramatized the Creation, or recreated a whaling voyage.

Moving panoramas were all the rage in the US in the 1850s and 60s, as any town with a large meeting hall or theater could host them. They were advertised with characteristic nineteenth-century hyperbole: John Banvard claimed his Mississippi panorama comprised “three miles of canvas,” while John Adams Hudson’s panoramic trip down the Hudson river depicted four days and three nights and was some 1,300 yards in length. Many of these panoramas traveled to Europe after their American tours and were equally popular overseas.

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Image of a moving panorama from Scientific American, Vol. 4, Issue 13 (December 16, 1848), page 100.

travels, Stanley witnessed the pressures on Native peoples to adapt or perish in the wake of the 1830 Indian Removal Act and the increased incursions from trappers and settlers into the West.

As obstacles to western settlement, American Indians were often stereotyped as war-like savages. Stanley generally avoided these negative stereotypes and regarded American Indians as worthy subjects for fine art.

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COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT In arranging the works, Alligood says that in general they will continue the chronological organization used in the other permanent galleries, but new acquisitions will allow the curators to showcase different movements than had been highlighted previously.

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“We’re able to build out the Pop story in a way that has more texture,” Alligood said. “There are, perhaps, less famous voices, but we’ll be giving a more complete idea of what the movement was like in that moment.”

Movements such as Color Field painting, Minimalism, and Neo-Dadaism are likely to receive greater focus in the new installation. Alligood also mentioned an increased emphasis on sculpture—not only in the Twentieth-Century Gallery, but throughout the collection.

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WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING

“To accommodate State of the Art, we built a few new walls, and we may keep some of those to create new environments in which to showcase the work,” said Alligood.

He said the addition of enclosed areas inside the gallery also offers an opportunity for the team to feature works that require controlled lighting conditions.

As the Museum’s prep team is de-installing State of the Art from the Twentieth-Century Art Gallery, the curatorial team is in the final stages of planning for the reinstallation of the Museum’s permanent collection in the space.

It is rare for an entire gallery to be emptied as this gallery was for the temporary exhibition, and curators Chad Alligood, Mindy Besaw, and Manuela Well-Off-Man are excited at the prospect of starting with a clean slate as they plan for the new installation.

“The reinstallation of our Twentieth-Century Gallery affords us an opportunity to start fresh, to tell new stories, to underline new narratives, and to feature new curatorial talent,” said Alligood. “It is also a great opportunity for us to show off some exciting new acquisitions that we’ve made in the past couple of years, some of which have not been displayed publicly before.”

Recent acquisitions will feature prominently in the new installation, but many old favorites will be returning, as well.

While Alligood was hesitant to make many promises regarding what would or would not be reappearing, a few works will certainly be included. These include Mark Rothko’s No. 210 / 211 (Orange), Kerry James Marshall’s Our Town, and Donald Judd’s monumental sculpture Stack. The overall layout of the space, however, will likely be a bit different from the original wide-open installation.

WHAT ARE CRYSTAL BRIDGES’ MEMBERS TO DO WHILE WAITING FOR THE GALLERY TO REOPEN? “Visit the Van Gogh to Rothko exhibition,” Alligood suggests.

“It offers great highlights of twentieth-century artists and movements that will really inform our guests’ experience of our permanent gallery when it reopens.”

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COMING SOON 24

SUPERSTARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In February, Crystal Bridges will host Van Gogh to Rothko: Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. This remarkable exhibition features 76 artworks by 73 artists, beginning with Vincent van Gogh and Camille Pissarro and moving through Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Clyfford Still to Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Dine. The exhibition is a testament to the visionary collecting policies of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in the midto late twentieth century. Many of the artworks included represent the very best work by some of the superstars of the art world.

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EDITOR Linda DeBerry

Manuela Well-Off-Man, the curator in charge of the exhibition’s installation at Crystal Bridges, has arranged the works chronologically and by movement so guests can follow the development of various styles as they move through the gallery. Beginning with European Post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh and Camille Pissarro, the exhibition then moves visitors into the realm of the Surrealists, featuring works

by Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró.

“Since Crystal Bridges doesn’t collect European art, this is a wonderful opportunity for our audiences to view some of the styles that contributed to American Abstract Expressionism,” said Well-Off-Man. “There are some really stunning examples of Surrealism, like Miró’s Carnival of Harlequin, which is painted so precisely. The Harlequin is a sad figure, yet his surrounding is a joyous, playful dream world which is fascinating to look at.”

Joán Miró, Carnaval d’Arlequin, 1924-1925, oil on canvas, 26 x 35 5/8 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1940. © Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2015. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

Van Gogh to Rothko: Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

The Cubists are represented next, with works by Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger; then American Modernist artists, including some that will be familiar to Crystal Bridges’ Members such as Stuart Davis and Arthur Dove. All of these lead up to the real meat of the exhibition, a stunning selection of Abstract Expressionist works.

These include large-scale paintings by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline that showcase the artists’ mature styles, as well as Pollock’s iconic Convergence, 1952, a prime example of the artist’s signature all-over drip and splatter painting. There are also early works by a few artists that illustrate their artistic development: an early painting by Arshile Gorky that shows the influences of Surrealism, as well as an early work by Adolph Gottlieb that illustrates the impact of primitive pictographs on the Abstract Expressionist movement. Viewers will be able to draw

connections to works in Crystal Bridges’ collection, such as the Museum’s early Pollock, which also shows the influence of primitive art; and the early Mark Rothko that illustrates his roots in Modernism and myth.

For Crystal Bridges audiences, this exhibition presents an opportunity to view important works by American artists who are not currently represented in the Museum’s permanent collection. Some of the most notable of these are the large and iconic paintings by Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Frank Stella. The exhibition also offers a survey of the many techniques and styles within the Abstract Expressionist movement.

“For many guests when they hear ‘Abstract Expressionism,’ they only have one painting style in mind,” said Well-Off-Man. “But here they can experience the entire palette of painting

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techniques within one major style. First we had gestural movement. But some artists didn’t appreciate the more emotional responses and uncontrollable aspects of that, like splattering paint. Then slowly we had artists who really wanted to focus on color itself and the effects of color, such as Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Helen Frankenthaler, and then later Frank Stella.”

The exhibition includes large gestural works by Hans Hoffmann and Grace Hartigan, as well as a range of Color Field paintings including Mark Rothko’s luminous Orange and Yellow, 1956; the jubilant Tutti-Fruitti, 1966, by Helen Frankenthaler; and Florence Pierce’s more hard-edged approach of quiet rectangles on mirrored Plexiglas.

Female artists are another strength of the Albright-Knox’s Collection, which includes masterworks by Lee Krasner, Georgia O’Keeffe, Grace Hartigan, and a wonderful self-portrait by Frida Kahlo.

These female artists were as talented as their partners, but unfortunately they were often overlooked,” said Well-Off-Man. “With this exhibition we can really show that they can hold up to the works by their male peers.”

From the Abstract Expressionists, the exhibition moves to Minimalism and Op Art, styles that sometimes puzzle even viewers who are otherwise enthusiastic about abstract work.

But Well-Off-Man encourages Members to look closely and think about the artists’ focus on color when viewing these works.

“For some of our guests these may look all the same at first, but many of these artists approached these paintings because they were so interested in the effects of pure color,” she explained.

“There is a work by Jules Olitski, for example. On first view it looks very monochrome. But when you look closer, you see that he placed certain colors next to each other to intensify each other.

Using a spray gun, he achieved effects similar to the Pointillism of Pissarro, who studied how we perceive color. You can see the connections to artists in the first part of the exhibition.”

Another work in the exhibition also plays with the brain’s way of interpreting visual information: a vibrant painting by Bridget Riley, one of the artists associated with the Op Art movement.

The Op artists worked to use line and color to create illusions.

Riley’s large, striped canvas may call to mind the similarly striped painting by Gene Davis in the Museum’s collection.

“People at first view might see some similarities between her work and our Gene Davis because it consists of stripes, and there are some similar effects,” said Well-OffMan. “For example, if you look at our Davis long enough, you might get dizzy. But with Riley’s work, the stripes seem to come alive, they really move.

And when you look closer you see that certain stripes are the same from the top to the bottom of the canvas. And others vary in widths, and that makes the stripes seem to move as we view them. She and other artists were very interested in how our brain processes information.”

The exhibition wraps up with some major works by Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Dine. The Warhol, 100 Cans, is one of the last of his works to be painted by hand, using stencils. It was painted in 1962, the same year Warhol produced Coca-Cola [3] in Crystal Bridges’ collection.

It was also the year Warhol made the definitive move to what would become his signature Pop Art style.

“It is an exciting show, especially for a young institution like Crystal Bridges,” Well-Off-Man said. “Here you have it all, the big names, the key works for each artist. That is a great opportunity for our audiences to see things that we do not currently have in our collection.”

Van Gogh to Rothko opens February 21 and will be on view through June 1. Members-only previews are scheduled for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. February 20, and 9 to 10 a.m. February 21.

TOP LEFT: Clyfford Still, 1957-D No. 1, 1957, oil on canvas, 114 13/16 x 161 1/2 x 2 5/8 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1959. The © City and County of Denver. Photograph by Tom Loonan. BOTTOM LEFT: Jackson Pollock, Convergence, 1952, oil on canvas, 93 1/2 x 155 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1956. © 2015 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph

by Tom Loonan. BOTTOM RIGHT: Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow, 1956, oil on canvas, 91 x 71 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1956. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Tom Loonan. RIGHT: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1938, oil on Masonite, 16 x 12 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear, 1966. © 2015 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

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RESIDENCE WOOD

Crystal Bridges is home to many trees. We celebrate their beautiful blooms in spring, their welcoming shade in summer, and their radiant hues of fall; it is when the days are mild that our experience in the forest is at its fullest, but what about winter? If you have only experienced the trees when the air is warm and the leaves are green, then you’ve never really met them. When asked, the Museum’s Director of Grounds and Facilities, Scott Eccleston, will tell you that it is only in winter that the trees truly shine.

by COMMUNICATIONS ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANT Brandon Mason 28

Stephen Ironside

IN THE

TR AILS & GROUNDS 29

“Only in the leafless forest can you see the true grandeur of a tree’s trunk,” Eccleston said.

“When the bones of the trees are laid bare, we can fully appreciate the architecture of the forest.” Foliage, he explained, is just the skin, a glamour that only serves to distract us from a tree’s true nature without leaves. The forest stops becoming a single emerald entity and is transformed into a community of individuals.

“Only in the leafless forest can you see the true grandeur of a tree’s trunk.”

When we can clearly see the trees and compare them to one another, we can speculate as to the differences in their personalities. “Our resident black gum is around 200 years old,” Eccleston said. “Its deep-furrowed bark could have witnessed the Civil War. Generations have walked beneath the spread of its branches. It’s the largest of its kind in the state of Arkansas.” A tree of this age and size seems patient and wise, taking its time to grow into the Champion it is today. Another Champion tree on our grounds, a 50-year-old white pine, is young in comparison, and might seem ambitious or impatient.

Trees appear to be impervious to winter. As fall comes to a close, they shrug off their greenery; beyond that, the trees seem

unaffected by the growing night. Not all though: when all others have dropped their leaves to the forest floor, the colorless foliage of the beech remains. Through the sparse winter forest, the beech trees are easily identifiable, still clinging to their leaves. Only when winter ends does the tree let them go to make room for spring’s new growth.

SCOTT ECCLESTON

Winter also brings out the strength and spirit of some of the most unassuming trees. The American holly, otherwise unimpressive in the warm months, flaunts its green leaves and red berries against the gray backdrop of winter. The holly stands boldly against the long night, reminding us that life endures, even in the bleakest of seasons. It lends us its strength: hang on, it seems to say, spring is coming.

Don’t waste this opportunity to grow your relationship with our forest residents. Venture onto the frosty trails this winter to view the trees laid bare. Reflect on the history they’ve seen. Take in the grandeur of their trunks; see the faces in their bark. Look closer; see who really resides in the wood.

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E D U C AT I O N

WATIE WHITE

30 LENKA CLAYTON

JUSTIN FAVELA KEDGAR VOLTA

MATTHEW MOORE

JEILA GUERAMIAN KRISTEN CLIFFEL

LIVING ARTISTS \ LIVING ART

FLORA MACE

The Educational Impacts of State of the Art

“For a lot of our classes, we take the students to the work of a particular artist in the gallery,” said Public Programs Manager Janelle Redlaczyk, “but being able to have the artists take the students to their work and talk about it—I think that made a lot of difference in their experience.” Teen programming seems to have received a particular boost from the artists’ presence. “The exhibition was great for teens because the ideas the artists are dealing with in their works are things that teens are interested in,” explained Redlaczyk.

Working with living artists has had an impact on the tour program, as well, and one that possibly surprised some of the Gallery Guides. “Much of our focus in training sessions is on artists in the collection who are no longer living,” said Alyssa Wilson, Guide Program Manager. “So, when the guides learned about those artists and their works, we have relied on research by the curatorial staff as well as outside art historians.” Beginning early in the year, the guide team was provided written information about the artists involved in State of the Art, as well as video of artist interviews of some of the artists at work. Curator Chad Alligood also shared insights based on his personal encounters with the artists. These experiences, combined with the opportunity to meet several of the artists in person, have had a huge impact on the Guides.

“Unraveling the stories, meeting the artists, and asking them our questions has changed our understanding of the works and made them come alive,” said Wilson. “I think I can speak for many in the group and say that this exhibition has changed their perspective on contemporary art. It’s been really neat to watch Guides demonstrate what the exhibition is all about— first by discovering it for themselves, and then taking on the role of helping guests discover it as well.”

Senior Museum Educator Sara Segerlin was impressed by the way the visiting artists opened up to Museum guests. “The artists who participated in programs came ready and willing to build bonds and make connections,” she said. “They offered up a very personal, often emotional look into their lives and their work that was very humanizing.”

It reminded us that the artworks are not just objects on the wall, but there is a person behind each one. That human connection is what really draws people to Crystal Bridges, I think. And the artists’ presence has had a very invigorating effect, both on our guests and our staff. They remind us that art is alive. SARA SEGERLIN

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Stephen Ironside, Marc Henning

During the run of State of the Art, the Museum’s Education Department brought in more than 60 of the 100 artists featured to conduct public programs of one kind of another with Crystal Bridges guests. This unprecedented input from working artists made quite an impact, both on the guests and on the staff who worked with them.

TOP: Clyfford Still, 1957-D No. 1, 1957, oil on canvas, 114 13/16 x 161 1/2 x 2 5/8 in.

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1959.

The © City and County of Denver. Photograph by Tom Loonan. MIDDLE: Camille Pissarro, Peasants in the Fields, Eragny, 1890, oil on canvas, 25 3/8 x 31 5/8 in.

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of A. Conger Goodyear, 1940.

Photograph by Tom Loonan.

New Ways of Working with Paint

by ASSOCIATE MUSEUM EDUCATOR Jeanne Vockroth

KIDS

SCRAPE, SPOT, SOAK

TRY THIS! Find some unusual tools to paint with at home, like plastic silverware or chopsticks; they will work well with tempera paint. See what different kinds of marks you can make!

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You’ll follow the path of Modern art with your children when you visit Van Gogh to Rothko [opening Feb. 21], and we’re planning lots of family-friendly ways to make that journey a fun learning experience for all ages! Be sure to pick up a Family Guide to help you enjoy the exhibition, and check out new hands-on activities inside and outside the galleries, as well as in the Experience Art Studio.

Since this exhibition includes masterpieces from the late 1800s to nearly the present, it’s a great opportunity to explore the wide variety of techniques artists use to make their work, and inspire your children to be creative artists at home. As a little preview, let’s look at a few of the artworks you’ll see, made by artists who broke free from traditional painting methods (like painting with a brush on a canvas using an easel).

Instead of brushes, American artist Clyfford Still often applied paint to his canvases with a “palette knife,” a tool that is like a little metal spatula. Still used the palette knife to apply his paint in thick globs and thin layers, and to scrape paint from the surface of the canvas.

TRY THIS! Use a Q-tip or pencil eraser to create artwork made of many, many small dots; you can use paint or stamp pads. While you’re working, remember to step back to see how it looks from farther away.

Camille Pissarro was a French artist known as the “Father of Impressionism.” His painting, Peasants in the Fields, Eragny, was influenced by a style of painting called Pointillism, in which artists painted with small dots of pure color.

Instead of the artist mixing paints on the canvas, your eye “mixes” the colors when looking at the paintings from a distance.

BOTTOM: Helen Frankenthaler, Tutti-Fruitti, 1966, acrylic on canvas, 116 3/4 x 69 in. Collection AlbrightKnox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1976. © 2015 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

What do the colors in Tutti-Fruitti by Helen Frankenthaler make you think of?

Frankenthaler was an American artist who painted in an unusual way. She poured thinned paint onto large pieces of canvas; the paint soaked into the canvas and stained it.

You’ll discover many more interesting ways to create when you visit Van Gogh to Rothko— like Jackson Pollock’s drips and splatters, Agnes Martin’s meditative pencil drawings, and Roy Lichtenstein’s comicstyle painting. Visit us soon with your family!

TRY THIS! Mix paint or food coloring with water in small cups and carefully pour it onto a wet piece of paper, or a thick paper towel. You can try using eyedroppers to apply the paint, too.

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G N I K MA MARK S I H

Stephen Ironside

ll a h s r s Ma ace, e m a r J Kerry about art, n Dream a talks he Americ and t

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Race is front and center in Marshall’s work, which deals quite straightforwardly with the difficulties faced by a black population in an environment established and largely governed by the white population. Marshall has been a witness to some of the most dynamic, if violent, chapters in US race history. Born in 1955, the year after the landmark court decision Brown vs. Board of Education, Marshall lived in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1963 race riots, and moved with his family to south central Los Angeles in time to witness the 1965 riots in Watts. It is not surprising that these powerful episodes from his youth, plus his adult experiences as an African American artist striving to break into the white-dominated art world, would be expressed in his artwork. He emphasizes the presence of black America with his large-scale works in which the black figures are black indeed: a deep ebony that pronounces his subjects’ race so definitively that some viewers, even African American viewers, are made uncomfortable by their unapologetic blackness.

Marshall visited Crystal Bridges in November, and Editor Linda DeBerry spoke with him about his work and the challenges of black America.

LD In Our Town, as in several of your other paintings, you place your figures in an environment that looks very much like the stereotypical ideal of the suburban American Dream. What, to you, is the American Dream today, and is it different for white people and black people?

KJM The American Dream is, in a lot of ways, encapsulated in this idea of the pursuit of happiness. In the starkest terms, that’s probably what it is, it’s the right to and the ability to secure all of the things you want that make your life pleasant and productive.

So that’s the fundamental of what I think the American Dream is, and it’s supposed to be the right of every American citizen; they’re supposed to be able to pursue those things, without impediment, especially without impediments from the government.

But the complicated relationship between African American or black people and the American Dream is that even government entities were putting road blocks or impediments in the way of the black population for achieving that kind of dream—to getting all the things that were due them as citizens of the United States.

Because until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they couldn’t even guarantee the right to vote for black people—who were American citizens, were born here, and had been here for generations. So 34

that’s where there’s the complicated relationship between what the American Dream means for black Americans and what it means for white Americans.

It’s different, because black Americans could never take it for granted that they had access to all of those opportunities that were due them as American citizens.

It was something that had to be fought for, had to be struggled for, and had to be asked for.

LD You’ve talked about operating in the border between stereotypically negative images and overcompensating for those by making overly positive images. Has that changed at all?

KJM There’s still a lot of tension around that area.

You take Kara Walker, there’s a lot of tension between the kinds of images and narratives Kara Walker produces and the way the black population perceives the work. There’s still a lot of tension. Even in mine, the fact that the figures are so black, that causes some angst among a lot of black people, because the associated idea of what it means to be black is still stigmatized.

LD How do you celebrate cultural differences in your work without stereotyping?

KJM This may sound strange, but the stereotyping is not the problem. It’s not a problem really. On the one hand, everybody advances a certain kind of judgment or perception of things that can be modified over time with a certain familiarity with individuals, but we all make assumptions about things. Nobody reserves judgment across the board, from the outset. That’s just not how human beings operate. And people stereotype within cultures and from the outside. The problem is not whether people do that or not, the problem still remains: how do you take a population that had been a slave population and make that

Kerry James Marshall, Our Town, 1995, acrylic and collage on canvas.

Kerry James Marshall is an artist of national and international stature, though his casual, approachable manner might not announce that. His works are included in museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Last year he was honored with a one-man show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, a venerable institution which rarely presents exhibitions of work by living artists, and has never before featured a one-man show by an African American artist.

population equal in every way that matters: not the way you make individuals matter, but as a population. And for black people, if you have to go away from other black people in order to be successful, that’s a problem. This is what most black kids experience as a narrative of their reality—that they live in bad neighborhoods, they go to bad schools, they have bad parents who don’t participate in their education, they are largely unemployed, and they are subject to high crime rates—that’s the dominate narrative. So if you have to be put on a bus and taken to a neighborhood where there are white kids in the school, then you [come to believe] that you can’t get a good education unless you’re sitting next to a white kid in a school. You can’t succeed, and you can’t get a job unless there’s some white guy who brings a company into your neighborhood and creates a job for you, because nobody in your neighborhood seems

to be able to do that. The prosperity follows the white people.

You can’t convince a kid that there’s not something inherently valuable about having that white skin.

LD So what advice do you give to a young black artist?

KJM Figure out where the top is and try to get to it. It’s that simple. Look out there, figure out what the best is and try to do that. Do better than that. It’s the only way. And you have to be confident that you know what the top is, that you know what the best is, and that you can get there.

When you believe you belong in the world [of art museums and universities], then you act like it. I think part of the reason why I’m 35

This whole problem with representation of people who are not fundamentally part of the narrative of art history is that there’s a certain kind of standard that you have to apply. So when artworks went from looking like the things that Caravaggio was making to looking like things that Dubuffet was making, you’ve got to have a logic that connects those two things and makes them part of the same conversation. So for an African American artist, you have to be able to connect, you have to look at the history. If you look at the work that an African American artist does—if that’s something that was being made long before they were born, then they can’t assume any level of importance that would guarantee their position in the narrative. Because they are still following a paradigm that was set by somebody else long before.

You’ve got to bring something that’s different from that to the work you’re making, but that’s connected to it. If you can’t bring something that’s different, if you’re just trying to fit in to it, then you’re never really going to make it.

You look at what they added and how singular that addition was, or you look at whether or not the form they embraced changed what was possible for other artists to make after they made that change.

LD What was it like to have your own show at the National Gallery?

KJM It’s a big deal when you get into a space like that. They don’t normally show work by living artists, anyway, period. And it’s your national museum. That’s a big deal.

I always say that my orientation has been to try to make sure I could get work in places like that. I mean really, I stayed focused on that as an objective, and it worked out.

LD You have talked about how you consciously used the tools of Western art history as a means of getting the attention of the art establishment and getting your work into museums. Do you think those tools, those rules, need to change?

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KJM I don’t think it needs to change. The tools don’t have to change. And in a way, neither does the structure have to change.

What has to change is the orientation of the black population; and the way they think about their relationship to the structure has to change. If you are situated in a position where you always expect to have to be extended an opportunity, that somebody has to make a space for you, that somebody has to open up a door or create an opportunity or create a program, then you will always be disadvantaged, because it requires the generosity of somebody else who has possession of those things in order to give you access to it. And my philosophy has always been that you can’t depend on the generosity of other people for your well-being, because as long as you do you will always be at a loss.

LD Crystal Bridges’ Members are familiar with Our Town and some of your other work in a similar vein, but some of your work is very different in style.

KJM It’s a part of the whole thing we were talking about. If you’re going to take charge of how you participate, then you have to know how to operate through all of the different modes that are available, so that you get to choose and you’re not limited by a lack of experience or ability or familiarity.

LD I’ve heard from some minority artists—Native American artists, for example—who feel as if they’re ghettoized by this expectation that they deal with or advertise their race in their work: that they can’t just be an artist, they have to be a Native American artist. How do we avoid that feeling of minority artists being expected to work a certain way?

KJM

On the one hand, critical mass—where it’s such a common occurrence when you go to the museum that it’s no longer consequential, that it’s no longer solving a problem. That when you go to a museum you are as likely to see Native American images as well as work by Native Americans as you are to see white images. It’s as simple as that.

You’ve got to be in the world, that’s the only way. You can’t have people turn around and not see you.

LD You’ve talked about how black artists have, in some ways, thwarted the potential of their work by trying to blend in.

KJM It’s that thing where people say: if I make abstract work, then people won’t assume that the work had anything to do about me, if it doesn’t have a black subject in it. Because if you see a black subject, then people automatically assume that it has something to do with you and your life and your experiences and things

Stephen Ironside

in the position that I am is that when I showed up places, I talked like I knew what I was talking about. So people said “Oh, well, I guess he knows what he’s talking about.” It makes all the difference in the world. I wasn’t asking for favors; I wasn’t asking anybody for anything. I could pass judgment on everything that was out there in the art world, and I did. When you show up and you act like you know what you’re talking about, people treat you like that.

LEFT: Paolo Caliari Veronese, Allegory of Navigation with a Cross-Staff: Averroës, 1557, oil on canvas, 80 3/4 × 44 3/8 in. Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.74.99.2). MIDDLE: Paolo Caliari Veronese, Allegory of Navigation with an Astrolabe: Ptolemy, 1557, oil on canvas, 80 × 44 3/8 in. Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.74.99.1). RIGHT: Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Senufo peoples, Fetish Figure, 20th century, wood with coarse cloth and feathers, 8 in. x 8 1/4 in. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Baker (M.74.1.5).

like that. White artists were free from that; nobody made those assumptions about their work. The other part of it was that nobody really challenged the right of white artists to keep painting white people. That was not a problem. But for black people, it’s a problem to represent yourself, because that’s a “pigeon hole.” A black person painting a black person, that’s a pigeon hole. A white person painting a [white] person, well he’s just making a painting.

But that’s ignoring a set of realities that have everything to do with the structure that your operating within. For the Native American people, for black people too, or for the Chinese population, the numbers matter. We’re 12 percent of the population at best.

The population of the US is still over 68 percent white. But the problem is you can go into a museum and we don’t even make the 10 percent or 12 percent.

LD What was the first museum you saw and how old were you?

KJM It was the LA County Art Museum. I can’t remember whether it was fourth grade or fifth grade. There are two things in that collection [that really stand out]. They have two Veronese paintings. They’re about nine feet tall, both of them. They were like superheroes in those pictures. But then the other thing that I never forgot—I had never seen anything like it—there was a Senufo, you know the Senufo executioner figures? I saw that thing down there and I said “that’s the most powerful thing I ever saw in my life.” That stuck with me. I can visualize it to this day.

LD Have you ever painted it?

I made one. It’s a character in my graphic novel: the Rythm Mastr project that I worked on. I made one to draw from to do the comic.

It’s one of my power figures. But that particular piece, there’s nothing more powerful than that in the whole museum.

LD What is the power and the value of art—especially for young people?

KJM The one thing I think it really does is show you that you can make the world you want to see. Really that’s the value.

That’s what I think the arts are really about, you make the world you want to live in. You make the things you want to see. You make the things you want to hear if you want to be a musician.

You make the clothes that you want to wear if you want to be a fashion designer. If you’re an architect you make the buildings you think are fun to live in. You make the world. In art, you make the world, it doesn’t happen by itself.

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A RT I ST T PAT R I O

Crystal Bridges is delighted to welcome back John Trumbull’s full-length portrait of Alexander Hamilton, which has been at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 2013. In accordance with a joint ownership agreement, Crystal Bridges and the Met alternate possession of the portrait every two years. The work was donated to the two museums by Credit Suisse in 2013.

This elegant and sympathetic portrait of our country’s first Secretary of the Treasury was completed by Trumbull in 1792. It was commissioned by a group of New York merchants, and originally hung in the New York City Chamber of Commerce offices. Although Hamilton was the leader of the Federalist Party, and had served in political office, he chose not to be portrayed with any symbols of political power, saying: “The simple representation of their fellow Citizen and friend will best accord with my feelings.”

John Trumbull painted Alexander Hamilton in 1792

Trumbull is well known as a painter of historical scenes from the American Revolution, and created many familiar works, including The Declaration of Independence, painted in 1832. Trumbull wanted to be an artist at a young age and asked to be allowed to study with John Singleton Copley. Trumbull’s father, however, was set on him attending law school, and so Trumbull entered Harvard in 1772 at the tender age of 16, and graduated in 1773. In ‘75 he joined the First Regiment of Connecticut, and just a few months later witnessed, 38

nklin retary, enjamin Fra e his personal sec B h g u o h lt m A o bull to bec asked Trum sed, ay: fu Trumbull re career choice this w e is h a h v explaining e I had or ainting, iv t o m t s e p t at “The grea pursuit of y .m .. ing the gre in t g ra in o g m a e g n m for e f com ion.” the wish o has been r country’s revolut ou events of

from a distance, the Battle of Bunker Hill. This would later be the subject of one of his first historical scenes, The Death of General Warren at The Battle of Bunker’s Hill.

Trumbull resigned the army in 1777, and in 1780 at last got his wish to study art when he traveled to England to study with American painter Benjamin West. His studies were short-lived, however; just four months after Trumbull’s arrival, a British agent named John André was hanged as a spy in the US. Trumbull was swept up by British authorities in the aftermath of this event and imprisoned for treason. When he was released some seven months later, Trumbull went home to the US, but he returned to England in 1784 and was finally able to undertake his study of art.

Trumbull chose to take up history painting in order to record the heroic events of the American Revolution.

Trumbull’s paintings were well received everywhere but in the US. The country was mired in political contention over the United States’ position regarding the French revolution, and people seemed to have lost their taste for historical paintings.

Trumbull consequently gave up history painting altogether in 1793 and accepted an offer to serve as secretary to Chief Justice John Jay on the Jay Treaty Commission in London. He did not return to painting until 1800.

In 1817 Trumbull was commissioned to create four historical scenes for the US capitol, which remain on view to this day.

1 2 3 4

The Declaration of Independence Surrender of General Burgoyne Surrender of Lord Cornwallis General George Washington Resigning His Commission to Congress

TOP: Henry Wolf, John Trumbull, 1901, photomechanical wood engraving on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. BOTTOM: John Trumbull, Portrait of Alexander Hamilton, 1792, oil on canvas, 86 1/2 x 57 1/2 in. Jointly Owned

by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Credit Suisse, 2013.

B AC K S TO RY 38

John l l u b m Tru

UA Libraries Most of us know the “Friends of the Library” as a group of passionate citizens supporting local, regional, or university libraries. Many libraries could not survive without their donations, fundraising campaigns, and volunteer time. While the Crystal Bridges Library certainly has our share of dedicated and enthusiastic library volunteers and patrons, our library owes a particular debt of gratitude to University of Arkansas Libraries.

When the Museum library approached Dean Carolyn Allen, of University Libraries, about possible digital collaborations between the Museum Library’s rare book holdings and the University Libraries Special Collections, she was all in. In 2012 the Dean appointed a team of librarians to join the Museum librarians in the creation of our first online digital collection, Fruit-full Arkansas: Apples. Materials from both institutions were digitized, encoded, cataloged, and made accessible from both the Museum website and the University Libraries.

Dean Allen has been an invaluable champion for the Crystal Bridges Library from the beginning; providing not only valuable resources, but a collection of knowledgeable librarian consultants. From storing the library collection while the Museum was under construction, to serving on the hiring committee for the Library Director, to assistance in the selection

of equipment and training of staff, Dean Allen and the University Libraries were instrumental in getting the Crystal Bridges Library up and running. And perhaps even more significantly, Dean Allen arranged for the sharing of the University Libraries integrated library system (their online catalog) via a creative licensing agreement with Innovative Interfaces, Inc. This system— which created a shared catalog of records held by different institutions, but fully accessible through web interfaces—was quite unusual and daring to implement, but has since been a model for other libraries and institutions.

L I B R A RY

FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY

Our fruitful partnership has led not only to a more efficient, accessible Museum library, but also creates opportunities for “exhibitions,” available to the public, featuring resources from both institutions.

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We look forward to many future collaborations with our partner at the University of Arkansas. Watch our website later this year for the new digital exhibition, tracing the influences of architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Fay Jones in Northwest Arkansas, and celebrating the public opening of the completed Bachman Wilson House on Crystal Bridges’ grounds.

by LIBRARY DIRECTOR Catherine Petersen

A NEW DIGITAL COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE MUSEUM LIBRARY AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES HIGHLIGHTS THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND ARKANSAS ARCHITECT FAY JONES. With the relocation of Wright’s Bachman Wilson house to Crystal Bridges, University Special Collection librarians identified materials from the Fay Jones archives documenting the ten-year intersection of the two architects’ careers.

The online exhibition will highlight the history of the Bachman Wilson House and the personal and professional connections between Wright and Jones between 1949 and 1959; including their correspondence, experiences at Taliesin, Wright’s architecture school in Wisconsin, and their shared interest in organic architecture.

The generosity of a team of eight specialized University librarians have worked for over ten months researching, scanning, creating metadata, and cataloging the items for digital access.

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FIE LD T RI P F U N S E P 2 01 4 Crystal Bridges Board Chair and Founder Alice Walton posed for a photograph with a group of third graders visiting the Museum from Cooper Elementary in Bella Vista, AR.

FA M I LY S UNDAY OC T 1 9 2 01 4 Museum guests took part in a traditional birthday fiesta with State of the Art artist Justin Favela for Family Sunday’s The Big Draw. State of the Art artists Adonna Khare and Jeila Gueramian also visited for this international celebration that takes place at venues around the world each year. State of the Art artist appearances were sponsored by the Crystal Bridges Art Now Fund.

ARTIST WILMER WILSON

ART NIGHT OUT OCT 17 2014 October’s Art Night Out focused on performance art, with performances by State of the Art artists Wilmer Wilson, Jimmy Kuehnle, Angela Ellsworth, and Autumn Night, plus hands-on art making, a comedy performance, and interactive fun in the galleries. Sponsored

by AMP Sign & Banner, Arvest Bank, and the Crystal Bridges Art Now Fund.

ARTIST AUTUMN KNIGHT

ARTIST ANGELA ELLSWORTH

ARTIST JIMMY KUEHNLE

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C E L E B R AT I O N S 41

ARTIST GEORGE DOMBEK

A RTI N F U S I O N S E P 2 7 2 01 4 Artinfusion Members took a field trip to tour the beautiful grounds, studio, and gallery of artist George Dombek near Goshen, AR. Artinfusion is sponsored by Blue Moon Brewing Company and RopeSwing.

REVEREND HORTON HEAT

NEW 365 DEC 3 1 2 0 14 Nearly 800 guests attended Crystal Bridges’ second annual New 365 celebration, a late-night bash featuring music by The Reverend Horton Heat, body painting, a silent disco, fortune tellers, and a performance by comedian Troy Gittings.

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Dear Friends, While this will be my last letter in C magazine as Crystal Bridges’ President, I do not view this change in my relationship with the Museum as a departure, but as an evolution. From Executive Director to President to Board Member, one constant has been the passion and involvement I have experienced during my years here.

As I prepare to take on my next professional role, as Founding President of the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago, I have occasion to reflect over these past 5+ years. It has been intensely meaningful to me, professionally and personally, to have been part of the realization of the vision of Crystal Bridges.

To bring the Museum to life, and to witness the impact on so many lives has been a great and memorable pleasure.

Naturally, having put so much of my blood, sweat, and tears into Crystal Bridges, moving away from it is difficult. But I know that the Museum is in great hands, and has great momentum.

As I often say, “we’ve made a good start.” And, as a Board Member, I’ll enjoy the perfect vantage point from which to view the Museum’s ongoing development, and to remain connected.

I look forward to the day when the Lucas Museum is newly opened and I can view Crystal Bridges as the seasoned role-model of an experienced museum and example for one of its newest colleague institutions. I’m excited about Crystal Bridges’ future. We’ve built a strong foundation and an auspicious first few years. There’s no telling how much more is yet to come.

I am grateful to have played a part in bringing this dream into reality.

I thank each of you, Crystal Bridges Members, for the opportunity to lead and to have been a part of this great community. I look forward to what the future holds.

Fondly,

Don Bacigalupi BOARD MEMBER

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2009 2015 Don Bacigalupi (left) with his partner Dan Feder, their son Gus, and Board Chair Alice Walton

When I first came to Northwest Arkansas, I never expected to feel the depth of connection that I have felt here. The community opened its arms to me and my family, and we have made this place our home.

We’ve felt deeply connected and rooted here: to the Museum, to the region, and to all of you.

LAST WORD

Post Impressionism Cubism Fauvism Dadaism Surrealism Abstract— Expressionism Minimalism ism ism ism ism

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This winter our temporary exhibitions will be changing from State of the Art, which featured contemporary art made by artists who are underrepresented on the national level, to Van Gogh to Rothko, which highlights some of the most well-known names in art, featuring works made up to 135 years ago. The exhibition showcases many of the “isms” of art history: Post Impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism….

Did you notice any “isms” in State of the Art?

The idea of classification and definition of art movements is something that is done (for the most part) after the fact. A few artists begin to move in a new direction, and others are inspired by the changes and begin to make their own interpretations. Often, it is only in looking back that we can see the similarities well enough to name and define them. Experiencing art in the moment of its making, or very soon thereafter, moves us on a deep and elemental level. In these moments, it is simply you and the work—no ism is required. Looking forward, we cannot predict what movements or styles may arise. That’s why the collecting of contemporary work is such a daring enterprise. There are no guarantees.

Over time, the works we call “contemporary” today will, in turn, become part of the story of our past.

It is a long continuum: a tale with many chapters, plot twists, and sidestories. And yes, isms … eventually.

Categories have not yet been developed to define the work being made by American artists today. And in truth, while isms are an important and interesting way to talk about and understand art in a historical context, it’s your direct experience with a work that matters most. You don’t have to bring anything to your encounter with art except your life experiences, your own interests, and a sense of discovery. Most of the time, that’s all art asks of us.

As we move forward into another new year, I warmly invite you to come back to our galleries soon and be moved once again by the power of art: past, present, and future.

Rod Bigelow EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Because Crystal Bridges collects both historical work and contemporary work, we are engaged not only in endeavoring to build a collection that tells the past story of American art; but also in looking at artists working now, to reflect on what art is telling us about our future.

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S U P E R S T A R S MEMBERS-ONLY PREVIEW 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. February 20 9 to 10 a.m. February 21

VanGogh

Rothko

MASTERWORKS FROM THE ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to view 76 masterpieces by 73 superstars of the art world, including Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, and more.

FEBRUA RY 21

JUNE 1, 2015

$10 , FREE for Members and youth ages 18 and under.

Reserve tickets online or at guest services (479.418.5700).

SPONSORED AT CRYSTAL BRIDGES BY

Art Agency, Partners Harriet and Warren Stephens, Rick and Beverly Chapman Family Stephens Inc. Stout Executive Search

CrystalBridges.org BENTONVILLE, ARK ANSAS

This exhibition was initiated by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, and was organized by Albright-Knox Chief Curator Emeritus Douglas Dreishpoon. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. TOP LEFT: Vincent van Gogh, La Maison de la Crau, 1888, oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 21 1/4 in. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear, 1966. Photograph by Tom Loonan. TOP RIGHT: Vassily Kandinsky, Fragment 2 for Composition VII, 1913, oil on canvas, 34 1/2 x 39 1/4 inches. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1947. Photograph by Tom Loonan. MIDDLE LEFT: Amedeo Modigliani, La Jeune bonne, ca. 1918, oil on canvas, 60 x 24 inches. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1939. Photograph by Tom Loonan. MIDDLE RIGHT: Juan Gris, Le Canigou, 1921, oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1947. BOTTOM: Roy Lichtenstein, Head—Red and Yellow, 1962, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1962. © 2014 Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear, 1966. Photograph by Tom Loonan.

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