Knoxville Museum of Art
1050 World's Fair Park
Knoxville, TN 37916-1653
(865) 525-6101
Map
www.knoxart.org
Exhibitions
Liquid Light: Watercolors from the KMA Collection
After the Fall
Higher Ground: A Century of Visual Arts in East Tennessee
Ritta Elementary School
Events
Liquid Light: Watercolors from the KMA Collection
January 27-April 15, 2012
celebrates the KMA’s growing watercolor collection and presents an exciting range of approaches to the medium. The selection of more than 50 works includes landscape images by watercolor masters from East Tennessee. Thomas Campbell, Charles Krutch, George Galloway, Betsy Worden, and Hubert Shuptrine describe specific locations in detail. Others, like Richard Clarke, and Walter Stevens, use landscape as a point of departure into abstraction. Alongside works by these local masters are those by internationally known artists Red Grooms, Thornton Dial Sr., and Charles Burchfield, each known for highly expressive scenes rendered in bold contours.
Liquid Light also represents a variety of technical approaches to watercolor. Janet Fish, Alice Baber, and Whitney Leland exploit the medium’s inherent qualities in images made up of transparent pools of color. Jered Sprecher and Lee Walton build regimented compositions featuring hard-edged imagery and uniform color application. Red Grooms and Carl Sublett manipulate their paper support in order to introduce sculptural qualities to the painted surface.
Many of the works featured in Liquid Light were acquired recently through gift or purchase and have not been previously exhibited.
After the Fall
November 4, 2011-February 5, 2012.
After the Fall is one of the first major surveys devoted to the exciting art being produced by a new generation of artists from Eastern Europe’s former communist countries. Most of the artists represented are in their thirties, and several are quickly becoming widely known after being featured in international biennials, art fairs, and museum exhibitions. Most were born under Communist rule but their art training occurred following the fall of Communism. Despite being involved in the global art world, these artists are devoted to living and maintaining studios in their home towns. Their work offers a variety of inside perspectives on Eastern Europe’s complex cultural legacy.
The idea was formulated by Marc and Livia Straus, internationally recognized collectors and curators, and founders of the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, New York, where the exhibition premiered. The couple’s visit to hundreds of studios across Eastern Europe confirmed their belief that the region contained a wealth of important new work being created by young artists. Rather than present a massive survey exhibition, the Strauses instead elected to offer audiences a show of greater depth by selecting roughly 40 works—mostly large-scale paintings—by only 18 of the most promising artists. The KMA will present a slightly smaller version of After the Fall, and is only the second venue to host this groundbreaking exhibition.
Opening reception Friday, November 4 from 6 to 8pm, in conjunction with Alive After Five. Free and open to the public.
After the Fall is organized by the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in partnership with the KMA. Catalogue sponsor is the Romanian Cultural Institute, New York. KMA sponsors include the Tennessee Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. KMA media sponsors include AT&T Real Yellow Pages, Digital Media Graphix, Kurt Zinser Design, and WBIR.
The Knoxville Museum of Art opened Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee, a new permanent installation of works from its collection celebrating the art and artists of Knoxville and the surrounding region. The fascinating and complex story of our area’s rich artistic heritage and its connections to the larger currents of American art are largely unknown, and certainly underappreciated. Highlights of the new installation include important works by Catherine Wiley and Lloyd Branson, pioneering artists who introduced Knoxville audiences to Art Nouveau, Impressionism, and other international art movements of their day; Joseph and Beauford Delaney, two of America’s most significant African-American artists; and works from the 1950s and 1960s by the Knoxville Seven, a group of progressive artists connected to the University of Tennessee who transformed and energized the area’s artistic climate. Art from more recent decades includes mixed-media objects by visionary sculptor Bessie Harvey along with a selection of works by leading area artists whose creations represent the quality and diversity of art-making in the region today.
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