Exhibitions:

AN ARTISTIC DISCOVERY: The Congressional Student Art Competition

Will Barnett at 100: Eight Decades of Painting and Printmaking

Muted Imprints: An Installation by Misako Inaoka

Glass Act: The Contemporary Studio Art Glass Movement Turns 50

MARTIN SCHOELLER: Close Up

AMERICAN TREASURES: Masterworks From the Butler Institute of American Art

Portraits from the Permanent Collection

THERESA BERNSTEIN: An Early Modernist

Events

Will Barnett at 100: Eight Decades of Painting and Printmaking
March 27 - May 20

To mark the 100th birthday of pioneering painter, printmaker, and educator Will Barnet (born May 25, 1911), this exhibition of nearly fifty works explores the momentous evolution of Barnet’s art from realism to abstraction during one of the most distinguished careers in American art. Barnet’s paintings, drawings, and prints are in major museums around the world — and at the age of 100, he is still creating the works of a true American master.

Barnet’s career as an artist and America’s foremost printmaker has evolved from 1930s social realism to 1940s cubism to 1950s geometric abstraction, and since 1961, figurative realism. “I have lived through a lot of difficult periods: abstract expressionism, minimalism and so on,” Barnet said, in thinking back. Barnet’s highly original work builds upon the foundation of his Indian Space abstract works of the 1950s, based upon Native American-inspired organic and geometric pictograph forms within a flat, seamless space. In the 1960s, Barnet’s work shifted from abstraction to figurative work, when he created his most iconic and beloved works.

This exhibition of more than 50 works demonstrates Barnet’s continuous capacity for reinvention and new perspectives, even today in his 100th year. Will Barnet At 100 is organized by The Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida, which has represented Barnet since 1973.

Muted Imprints: An Installation by Misako Inaoka
March 27 - May 20

Misako Inaoka is known for her kinetic sculpture and site-specific installations. The artist’s desire to carefully construct miniature environments that evoke wilderness, but are grounded in technology, comes from a long-standing interest in, as she says, “the boundary between what we call natural and artificial.” Born in Kyoto, Japan in 1977, Inaoka lives and works in San Francisco, California.

Expect to walk among birds twittering in tree branches, a deer shyly glancing up at you, and fantastical worlds tucked behind an ordinary wall. Expect also to find bizarre combinations of animal and machine, both endearing and unsettling. An incremental tilt of a small bird’s head when you near it, or a flash of light and color glimpsed through a peephole in an otherwise unobtrusive wall, signals the viewer that they should move in, as close as possible, to delight in the invented creatures and landscapes of Inaoka’s imagination. The relationship between the viewer and Inaoka’s artwork is one of discovery. The viewer’s presence brings the exhibition to life, literally

Glass Act: The Contemporary Studio Art Glass Movement Turns 50
March 27 - October 14, 2012

This survey of contemporary studio glass will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary in 2012 of the Studio Glass Movement in America. Studio glass describes one-of-a-kind fine art glass pieces made in individual studios rather than glass factories. This movement started in the early 1960s, when Harvey Littleton – today considered the father of the studio glass movement - built his own glass-making furnaces in a freestanding studio. Glass Act will showcase art glass representative of the full breadth of this defining period in contemporary glassmaking. This exhibition demonstrates the different ways in which glass is used as a medium for contemporary art. The display focuses on unique objects that explore ideas by the leading glass artists today including Howard Ben Tré, Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey, Kyohei Fujita, Harvey Littleton, Concetta Mason, Danny Perkins, Christopher Ries and others.

Portraits from the Permanent Collection
September 6, 2011- May 13, 2012

From the pensive gaze of Georgia O'Keeffe in profile to the powerful punch of Muhammed Ali’s fist, some of the most iconic images of artists and celebrities are part of the Museum’s collection of portraiture. There’s something about a portrait that can be irresistible and quite revealing. Portraiture captures a single moment, giving us insight into someone’s personality.

This exhibition presents more than 50 images in all media – painting, drawing, prints and photography – exploring the intimate as well as very public faces of artists, celebrities, politicians, and everyday people worldwide.

THERESA BERNSTEIN: An Early Modernist: Paintings from the Martin and Edith Stein Collection
Ongoing

This small focus exhibition presents 12 paintings dated between 1912 and 1930, by the long-neglected modernist New York artist Theresa Bernstein (1885-2002). Born in Philadelphia, Bernstein was at the heart of the avant-garde from the moment she arrived in New York in 1912. A friend of artists Zorach, O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, and Demuth, Bernstein’s technical ability, command of color, and commitment to populist subjects aligned her with the radical Ashcan school early in the 20th century. The exhibition reveals the modernist development of a woman artist who captured the temperment of her times: New York public places, Coney Island, Carnegie Hall, and scenes of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she and her artist husband William Meyerowitz, had a summer home.

Organized from the collection of Martin and Edith Stein.


AN ARTISTIC DISCOVERY: The Congressional Student Art Competition
April 11 - May 20

Each spring, An Artistic Discovery, a nation-wide high school arts competition sponsored by the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, recognizes and encourages the artistic talent in the nation as well as in each congressional district. The Museum’s exhibition, which presents the work of hundreds of students, invites all high school students in Florida’s 19th Congressional District to submit work to be juried and exhibited. The student whose work is selected Best in Show travels to Washington D.C. where their artwork is displayed in the halls of Congress.

• Reception and awards ceremony on April 11 at 5:00 PM

Calendar