San
Angelo Standard Times
December 3, 2005
By JOHN BOYD
San Angelo's ''little museum'' became one of the big boys Wednesday, receiving rare accreditation from the American Association of Museums, according to museum Director Howard Taylor.
For Taylor and the staff of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, the benefits of that association's accreditation are twofold. First, and perhaps most-noticeably, the museum receives a boost in esteem.
''People think this is a big museum, but we're very small - we're just big for San Angelo,'' Taylor said. ''Being accredited tells people, without them even knowing who we are, that we're one of the biggest and best.''
Second, the application process required a vigorous overhaul of the way SAMFA manages itself, Taylor said. The museum underwent a housecleaning - in both the literal and figurative senses - in which the staff re-examined its very foundations.
The staff spent a year in self-study, and a new institutional code of ethics was drawn.
''The No. 1 value I see in this is for us internally,'' Taylor said. ''We'll be able to really keep our noses to the grindstone.''
The association did not return phone calls Wednesday evening. But according
to its Web site, about 750 American museums received accreditation prior to
2005, or about 1 in 23.
Texas museums have received 43 accreditations. Others in the West Texas region include the American Airpower Museum and the Museum of the Southwest, both in Midland; the Scurry County Museum in Snyder and the Ellen Noel Art Museum of the Permian Basin in Odessa.
The accreditation comes as an early anniversary gift for SAMFA, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2006. The opening of the museum's Love Street location in 1999 was a major force in the museum association's recognition, Taylor said.
The older facility at Fort Concho was small and had too many infrastructure problems for recognition to even be a possibility. But as Taylor inked the museum's five-year plan shortly after the new location's opening, accreditation didn't seem so pie-in-the-sky, he said.
The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts primarily houses works from regional artists, although its ''Visions of America'' exhibit this summer and annual ceramics showcase have garnered national attention for the museum. Accreditation should only help improve that standing, Taylor said.
''I think of those people who came to this museum 25 years ago,'' he said.
''They had nothing but an idea. Now I look at all we've accomplished. That,
to me, is a miracle.''
San
Angelo Standard Times
December 3, 2005
By BRANDY RAMIREZ, Staff Writer
Each building designed by Douglas Moss and his partner, Malcolm Holzman, has its own flavor.
San Angelo museum of Fine Arts is no different, Moss said Friday night during a four-day tour of buildings created by the partners of Holzman Moss Architecture in New York City.
“We are very proud of this building,” Moss said. “It’s a very significant piece of architecture in the country.”
The building was the tour’s fourth stop.
More than 30 of the firm’s employees, along with college deans and architecture students, participated in the tour.
Some members of the group tilted their heads up and pointed at the building’s curved roof, which was designed to resemble a saddle or a Conestoga wagon.
Meanwhile, Howard Taylor explained how Holzman of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Architects (HHPA) won the bid to design the building that has helped shape the arts in San Angelo.
HHPA dissolved in August 2004; Holzman Moss Architecture was created the same month.
Taylor spoke of how 35 firms submitted proposals, but that Holzman’s individuality won over the board of trustees and himself.
“I got the job by default,” Holtzman joked.
To Taylor, the architects and trustees, the building that took three years to finish represents an old San Angelo with a modern twist.
The museum opened in 1999 and was built with a budget of $13.5 million.
“I was very thoughtful,” Taylor told the avid listeners. “It was really about us.”
Both Moss and Holtzman said people like Taylor, who have a vision of what the community wants, are important in the architecture world.
“Who would have thought of a thing like that?” Holtzman said, pointing to the museum, sparking laughter from attendees.
Lyna Vuong, a junior designer just out of college who has worked for the firm for six months, said she enjoyed seeing the design in person rather than on paper, as she has in the past.
“I haven’t seen a building like this — a building with one form,” Vuong said. “It makes it really unique. … I can’t tell the layout from the outside.”
Moss said the tour will help employees like Vuong get a taste for what the firm is all about — especially when communities like San Angelo are involved.
“We wanted to show employees the impact (the buildings) have on a community,”
Moss said. “It’s very heartwarming to see.”
San
Angelo Standard Times
November 4, 2005
Viewing the outdoors
Taos artist bringing out students' 'creative juices'
Colette Mull used a viewfinder to help her
see gradations of light as it fell on lilies she was painting Tuesday at the
International Water Lily Collection. Mull and nine other students are part
of an oil painting workshop taught by Taos-based Barbara Bartels and sponsored
by the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts.
Standard-Times photo by Arthur
Spragg 
"That's beautiful, that's exciting!" remarked Taos artist Barbara Bartels (left) to student Beverly Stribling as she made suggestions Thursday about minor adjustments to improve Stribling's painting. Standard-Times photo by Arthur Spragg
By BRYAN RUSSELL
brussell@sastandardtimes.com or 659-8264
Barbara Bartels wandered around the courtyard of a Spanish-style home in San Angelo as a handful of women painted garden scenes outside.
“You have 4 minutes,” the painter from Taos, N.M., told the students. “I want it as complete as possible.”
Four minutes later, the artists put down their brushes after having only six minutes to paint.
“This is the 20-minute painting, and this is the 6-minute painting,” Bartels said, comparing one student’s images of the same subject. “Look at how much richer the 6-minute painting is.
“You can paint and draw what you’re familiar with. When you’re not familiar with something, it’s harder,” she continued. “When you do these exercises, you get more familiar with your subject.”
This exercise in oil painting was one of several lessons Bartels taught during a five-day plein-air workshop held by the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts this week. Plein-air painting, an Impressionist style, is engaged in representing observed effects of outdoor light and atmosphere.
The students have painted at various outdoor locales in the city such as the International Water Lily Collection and the Fort Concho National Historic Landmark.
Kay Rork, one of the students, said the workshop has allowed her creativity and confidence to flourish. “It’s challenging and stimulates your creativity,” she said. “Because it’s intensified, it pushes you to develop your technique. You’re not sure of your technique, you’re not sure of your skills, and you’re not confident, but working with other people stimulates you to be creative and gives you self-confidence.”
Bartels has taught plein-air painting for more than 25 years in places such as New Mexico and Colorado. She was born in Amarillo, about 350 miles northwest of San Angelo, into a family of boot- and saddlemakers.
As a young girl, she sketched barns on the Panhandle on the back of her father’s business cards.
“I’ve always been mesmerized by the way the sun passes through glass and changes the colors,” she said. “I remember patterns on the bathroom floor, and I’d follow them with my eyes. Color, patterns and shapes have always been a part of who I am.”
Bartels received her art education in a classical European style. She paints in the plein-air style that is reminiscent of the French Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renior.She said she prefers to paint in nature because her subject is alive.
“A photograph is dead,” Bartels said. “When you’re out in nature, everything is alive, so your painting feels more alive. I love capturing a moment in time because it might not be there tomorrow.”
Nancy Slaughter, another workshop student, painted a section of the home where Thursday’s workshop was held, lined with lush greenery.
Bartels “is very nurturing and encouraging,” she said. “She has a lot of patience, and that’s what we need a lot of. She’s good at that.”
Slaughter has a second home in Taos, where she takes regular classes from Bartels. She said painting offers her a chance for continual education.
“It is a struggle even though you enjoy it. It’s using your creative juices,” Slaughter said. “I compare it to golf because all golfers get frustrated, but they love it.
“This is my golf.”
Bartels said she hopes the workshop inspires the students to develop the artist inside them.
“I want them to learn who they are as artists,” she said. “I don’t want them to paint like me. I want them to paint like themselves. I hope this is part of their path to becoming the artist they want to grow into.”
San
Angelo Standard Times
November 2, 2005
Blooming artistic Vision
Joy Noguess worked Tuesday on her
interpretation of the International Water Lily Collection as part of a weeklong
oil painting workshop taught by Taos-based artist and master instructor Barbara
Bartels. Ten participants are painting at various locations around San Angelo
in the workshop sponsored by the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. Standard-Times
photo by Arthur Spragg
San
Angelo Standard Times
October 7, 2005
Blonde blast
from the past
Marilyn Monroe look-alikes gather at art exhibit
Alicia Edwards(left) and Abby Gill dressed as Marilyn Monroe Thursday for
the opening of the art exhibit of Abby's father, James Gill, at the San Angelo
Museum of Fine Arts. James Gill, a native of San Angelo, graduated from San
Angelo High School, now Central, in 1952. Standard- Times Photo by Patrick
Dove
By PAUL A. ANTHONY
panthony@sastandardtimes.com or 659-8237
Perhaps the depth of affection many hold for Marilyn Monroe decades after her death can be glimpsed in Alicia Edwards’ reaction to a simple question.
“I love Marilyn Monroe!” she said, emphasizing the “love” by lifting her eyes and smiling.
Edwards, of Austin, shopped through five san angelo thrift stores Thursday before finding the perfect Marilyn Monroe dress.
What makes such a dress?
“Something that will blow up in the wind,” she said, or, barring that, “busty, open back and white.”
Edwards, 25, was one of four Marilyns and a 4-year-old Norma Jean who participated in the opening of the “UNCOMMONPLACES” exhibit at the san angelo museum of fine arts.
The exhibit, a broad look at the work of san angelo native and famed Pop Art painter James Francis Gill, features several looks at Monroe through the eyes of Gill, who painted both traditional images of Monroe and others that were less so.
The curator of the exhibit, Jim Edwards, is Alicia Edwards’ father. She was recruited to the lookalike contest after museum Director Howard Taylor persuaded her to wear a Monroe wig that he owns, she said.
“She’s the pinnacle of beauty, femininity,” Edwards said, explaining her attraction.
Edwards took second place in the contest, which was won by Amity Mitchell, 28, who called herself a twice-a-week natural blonde.
Mitchell said her daughter and two stepsons persuaded her to participate in the contest. Also a plus: She has drawn comparisons to the actress in the past.
With her was her husband, Dean Mitchell, who also dressed the part — with slicked-back hair and shoes with spats.
Between the music, the cars and the aura of the Monroe era, Dean Mitchell
said, “I just dig it, cat.”
San Angelo Standard Times
October 6, 2005
Artist Gill comes back home for his museum display
By BRYAN RUSSELL
brussell@sastandardtimes.com or 659-8264
James Gill’s first indication that he had entered a different world arrived in the form of a New York City delicatessen employee who shouted at him to hurry up and make a selection from the case of lunch offerings.
“I realized it was a whole different timing,” Gill said. “I was from the country, and this was the city.”
Gill, a consummate artist from the cusp of the American Pop Art movement, had left behind the placid streets of his san angelo youth only weeks before he traveled to the West Coast and eventually to New York.
“I was the proverbial guy standing in the street with grapes and staring up at the skyscrapers,” Gill said with a laugh about his first time in the Big Apple.
A week ago, Gill rented an apartment in the Cactus Hotel, where he looks over a desert expanse instead of towering skyscrapers while the san angelo museum of fine arts exhibits a vast retrospective of his work. The exhibit, “UNCOMMONPLACES: The Art of James Francis Gill,” opens tonight and will show through Jan. 15.
“He really is an important artist, historically,” said Howard Taylor, museum director. “Jim Gill was one of the major artists of his era, and he’s still a powerful artist. Who knows what his future holds?”
Gill was born in Tahoka, about 160 miles northwest of san angelo, in 1934. His family moved to san angelo, where he attended santa Rita Elementary and Central High schools.
Gill enlisted in the Marines and worked as an architectural draftsman, designing posters and, eventually, building plans. After he was discharged, he returned to san angelo, took painting courses at what was then san angelo College and went on to work for an architectural firm in Midland.
Gill moved to Austin in 1959 to study at The University of Texas before taking a position as an architectural designer in Odessa, where he started to paint seriously.
Gill then moved to Los Angeles in the early ‘60s, where he encountered beat generation writers such as Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg. He experienced a rapid ascent in the art world, getting his work into major collections such as New York’s museum of Modern Art and receiving commissions such as the cover of Time magazine in 1968.
Gill also was featured in the “Environment USA: 1957-67” exhibit in Sao Paulo, Brazil, alongside acclaimed artists such as Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol. Gill’s renown began to flourish during a time when artists were incorporating popular-culture imagery in their work. His work is often included in the realm of Pop Art, but Taylor said Gill’s art reflects qualities of a contemporary consciousness and a classical tradition.
Today, Gill’s home is in California’s Central Valley, but Taylor said Gill is still unequivocally san angeloan.
“His ties to san angelo are being brought back to the forefront,” he said. “He was a kid out of high school when he left, and he probably never looked back. Now he is looking back at his emotional ties to this town.”
Those ties stretched as Gill set out to explore the art world during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, but san angelo never left him.
“It feels really good to be here, but I have a lot of mixed emotions,” Gill said as he sipped from a white cup of coffee. “Half the people I know are dead. I still remember the names of the streets.
“When I left, it was sheepherders and cowboys, and now we have this incredible museum, and to be recognized at home is always interesting.”
Like many youth who leave san angelo for excitement and opportunity, Gill thought a change of scenery would bring him closer to his craft.
“I really wanted to get out of the small-town atmosphere and go where things were happening,” he said. “In the ‘60s in Hollywood, things were hopping.”
Gill said his connection to West Texas, including time spent as a rodeo cowboy, is still evident in his work.
“Art is always a part of who you are,” he said. “It’s your perception. It’s where you’ve been. You never leave that. If you’re a cowboy, you’re always a cowboy.”
Jim Edwards, curator of the Salt Lake City Art Center in Utah, will curate “UNCOMMONPLACES.” He initially considered Gill “too painterly” to fit into the Pop Art movement, but he said Gill’s unique mix of pop content with an Expressionistic style earn the artist a place in American art history.
Gill “has always drawn beautifully and has a wonderful ability to render,” Edwards said. “He creates powerful images that sort of stay with you.”
Taylor said the Gill exhibit represents the museum’s ongoing effort to promote local art heritage.
In the past, the museum has featured exhibits by Margaret Stites, a san angelo artist who globetrotted across Europe and also helped start angelo State University’s art department, and by Guy Juke, a san angelo-born graphic artist who made a name for himself creating images of the Texas music scene in Austin.
Taylor said many of the san angelo artists who have garnered wide recognition created art during a time when san angelo did not have an art museum and the university art program was still in its infancy.
“san angelo has produced artists of major magnitude,” Taylor said. “To think that even though they came from a relatively small town, they really hit in the international art world. That kind of tells you that creativity is where you find it.”
Museum's art exhibit can please all visitors
Here's a guarantee: While you won't care for every painting in the new Visions of America exhibit at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, you will find at least one you love.
I did.
''Pack this one up, deliver it to my car, and send me the bill,'' I told a couple of startled gallery monitors Wednesday at the museum.
The monitors - museum employees who protect the paintings from sticky-fingered thieves, children with actual sticky fingers and the like - didn't call security.
On the other hand, they didn't carry the possibly priceless painting of big rocks and small people to my minivan, either.
The exhibit has something for everyone: landscapes, portraits, pirates, seals.
Bob Bluthardt, director of Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, liked the painting of ''Seal Rock.'' Painted by Albert Bierstadt in the late 19th century, the image of seals playing in the ocean looks wet and inviting.
''The scene is cool and bracing, and I think I'll drop by a few times and stare at it to cool off during the dog days of the summer,'' Bob wrote as part of a caption that accompanied the painting.
OK, I wasn't wild about the seals. Maybe it's because my younger daughter and I were recently chased by a giant nutria, and the seals looked a little too much like the nutria's second cousin.
Or maybe I spent too much time thinking about killer nutria and not enough seeing ''Seal Rock.''
''Many of the works in this collection generate feelings that require us to linger and wonder,'' wrote Roger Allen, director of the Chicken Farm Art Center.
''All the paintings require seeing and studying. ...''
Nyla Rosenstrom agrees. Nyla's a retired schoolteacher who works as a substitute gallery monitor at the exhibit.
''I taught 6-year-olds for 23 years, so I figured it was time for me to get
out and broaden my horizons again,'' she said. ''I'm having a wonderful time.''
Nyla, who spent the last 12 years of her career teaching first grade at McGill Elementary, said she enjoys talking with people who pass through the galleries.
(Nyla has visited with everyone from art professors to the grandmother of a girlfriend she lost track of 20 years ago. Thanks to the grandmother, ''My friend and I are going to reconnect through e-mail,'' Nyla told me.)
Nyla told me her favorite part of the job is spending time with the paintings.
''My friends wonder how I can spend four hours standing in a room full of paintings, but I haven't been bored because I feel like they're my friends,'' she said.
''And every time I look at them, I see something different.''
Some particularly intrigue her, such as ''Cornelia Rutgers Livingston,'' a portrait of a young girl born in 1829.
''I wonder about her,'' Nyla said. ''Her little eyes look so sad. Her face looks so much like an adult. What is she thinking?''
Nyla's favorite painting in the exhibit?
''The seals,'' she said. ''I wish I were there.''
In the art museum, a farmer's son leaves home for the Army.
A mother plays with her baby.
Snooty servants serve dinner.
A jockey weighs himself before a race.
Water cascades from ''The Wilds of Lake Superior.''
A boy reluctantly practices a piano lesson.
A woman kneels on the grass in a white dress.
Seals splash in the ocean.
A sad-looking little girl holds a violet and stares.
And all the while, a first-grade teacher along with the rest of us see and study, lingering and wondering.
Copyright ©2005 San
Angelo Standard-Times
EXHIBITION IS A WORK OF ART
The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts hosts "Visions of America Art Collection,"
featuring 150 masterpieces spanning 250 years of American art history. The
exhibit, which continues through Sept. 25, includes works by Winslow Homer,
Georgia O'Keeffe, Norman Rockwell and others. The exhibit features masterpieces
from the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art in
New Britain, Conn., one of the oldest museums of American art in the country.
The paintings are exhibited chronologially, tracing the changes in American
art over the centuries. Beginning with its origins in the colonial period
and early Republic, the story of American art continues with the development
of landscape painting, images of women and their shifting roles in society,
and the impact of European styles, notably Impressionism. The exhibition also
illustrates the divergents paths American artists traveled in the 20th century,
from realism to modernism to Abstract Expressionism.
Hours: Sunday noon to 4 p.m.,
Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission: $3 to $6.
Information: (325)653-3333 or www.samfa.org
Collection features American artists
Editor's Note: This is a guest review provided by the Cincinnati
Post. In Ohio, the collection of American art was called "Stokes of Genius:
Masterworks from the New Britain Museum of American Art."
By JERRY STEIN
The Cincinnati Post
An impressive collection of American art f rom the New Britain Museum is akin to discovering buried treasure. The Connecticut collection has never toured.
Artists whose works appear in "Stokes of Genius: Masterworks fromt he New Britain Museum of American Art" (titled "Visions of America" in San Angelo) at the Cincinnati Art Museum include some renowned names drawn from across four centuries. These include Georgia O'Keefe, Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell, Cincinnati native Elizabeth Nourse and Andrew Wyeth.
Douglas Hyland, director of the New Britain Museum, said the 19th century Hudson River landscape school, the Ashcan artists (early 20th century urban American realists, 1908-1918, and later the American Scene painters of the '20s-'30s), and impressionism are areas of depth in the collection.
Winslow Homer and Thomas Hart Benton collections at New Britain also are important.
In the show, whic contains 120 (150 in San Angelo) paintings, one also will find works of artists who do not cut so high a profile as a Frank Church. Nevertheless, these works display an extraordinary amount of accomplishment.
Like many of its artists, however, the New Britain Museum itself, located near Hartford, Conn., also might not be well known, but its history dates to 1853.
The New Britain Museum initially was founded as an institute for learning. It had a library of 75,000 books by the time it opened its new building in 1901.
Support for an art collection began in 1903-4 when industrialist John Butler Talcott provided $25,000 to seed an art fund. An "art room" was provided o the second floor at the institute.
Hyland said the collection now numbers 5,000 pieces of both painting and sculpture.
"Two hundred of our paintings came from the Vose Gallery in Boston, the oldest continually operated art gallery in the country," Hyland said.
Many of these important purchases during the '30s and '40s were made by Alix Welch Stanley, president of the Stanley Rule and Level Company. Later, Stanley established the Harriet Russell Stanley Fund to purchase art as a memorial to his wife.
Here are some the highlights from the show:
· "A Knickerbocker Teas Party" by John Quidor, (1866): This
amazing painting humorously casts quite a different eye on Dutch society.
The oil is a depiction of a riotous party - nearly a bacchanal - insprired
from Wahsington Irving's history of New York.
Amid its golden lighting, one of the guests has spilled his entire plate on
his breeches, covering them with gravy.
Meanwhile, farther down the table another man has knocked over his chair onto a surprised dog while indecorously reaching for food across the table.
"In the 19th century, people like (novelist) Edith Wharton considered the descendants of these Dutch families the aristocrats fo this country," Hyland said. "In this instance, it's a spoof of these people. Irving is saying, 'Oh, the illustrious gentlemen and their beautiful women living in these stately mansions (along the Hudson River) have behavior which is really quite startling.'"
Quidor captures this in all of its frenzy.
· "Seal Rock" by Albert Bierstadt, (mid 1870s): This telling seascape of the Farallon Islands just west of San Francisco is both a technical tour de force and a comprehensive narrative on seals.
Bierstadt found these rugged, fog-covered islands (now a nature preserve that bans public visits) to be a mating place for large populations of sea lions. He employs all sorts of narrative here.
At the crest of an ascending stretch of rock "the king of the mountain is an enormous bull. He has got his harem here," Hyland explained.
Just below "some of the lesser bulls are trying to establish their spot on the rock for their harem."
At the base of the rock, a mother cow is engaged with her hungry pup. But not far off in the sea is papa bull with a fish in his mouth. His catch will supply potential dinner for the pup.
Technically, Bierstadt displays a virtuoso ability to paint waves. He accurately depicts the translucency of the thinner top portion of a breaker in a lime-green to suggest light flooding through it. The base of the wave, which surges toward the rocks, then darkens into an opaque blue-green.
"Hyland said the painting is one of the most popular in the collection. Some visitors return 25 years later, "and say, 'Do you still have "Seal Rock?" I dream about it.'"
· "West Rock, New Haven" by Frederic Edwin Church, (1849): One of America's great landscape painters may be known for his dramatic pictures of Niagara Falls. But this native of Hartford, Conn. preserved an important expanse of history for Connecticut with his painting of West Rock.
Church, a pupil of Thomas Cole and a principal member ot the Hudson River School, is known for preciseness and depth of clarity in the landscape.
In this picture, he shows West Rock with its bald red cliffs in the distance. The foreground is an inviting pastoral landscape for hay gatherers working near the leisurely, winding West River.
Overhead, streams of thin clouds drift high.
"' West Rock' caused such a sensation when it was exhibited, Church was then elected as the youngest member of the National Academy Design," Hyland said.
Today the bucolic peace of West Rock is gone.
Hyland pointed to various locales on the expansive countryside in the painting as if to update it. "There is a pizza parlor here, a used car there and dump right here."
· "East River from the 30th Story of the Shelton Hotel" by Georgia O'Keeffe (1928): This cityscape presents New York's buildings in somber grays.
The view is from Manhattan across the East River toward Queens and Brooklyn. Smoke plumes from plants, buildings and ships are almost decorative as they punctuate the steely blue-gray landscape.
O'Keeffe painted this while living with her mentor and husband, Alfred Stieglitz, in the East Side hotel.
She painted two New York series - one of specific buildings and another with more encompassing views of the city, of which "East River" is one.
Although there is detail of the city in the foreground, the picture becomes more stylized in the background.
Buildings become simple architectural shapes. In one sense, this view of New York is a harbinger of the later simplified botanical shapes and other natuarl forms that O'Keeffe would paint so vividly in her New Mexico and Lake George, N.Y., paintings.
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Howard's picks
San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts Director Howard Taylor chooses 10 "Visions of America" pieces you don't want to miss
Top 10 pieces
San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts Director Howard Taylor chooses 10 standout paintings in the "Visions of America" exhibition.
1. "The Death of DeSoto," Johann Mongles Culverhouse, 1873
"This painting is a representation of where our country came
from. It represents a period of colonization and exploration and is symbolic
as the beginning of the exhibit."
2. "West Rock, New Haven," Frederic Edwin Church, 1849
"It looks like Enchanted Rock in the Hill Country. It's reminiscent
of our own landscape, and you see the connection early American artists had
with the land."
3. "The Clove, Catskills," Thomas Cole, 1827
"This painting is very rugged looking with very dense forests. Cole was
meticulous in detail and was really ther founder of the Hudson River School."
4. "Dreams No. 1," Jacob Lawrence, 1965
"You certainly see the reflection of the difficulties of being African-American
in the United States. This is a painting with very stong cultural conscience.
It's a very powerful painting."
5. "One More Step . . . ," N.C. Wyeth, 1911
Wyeth "is probably the greatest children's-book illustrator of all time.
This piece was used in 'Treasure Island.' He had an ability to capture the
author's meaning. There will never be anyone who is as good an illustrator
as he was."
6. "Dusk," William Baziotes, 1954
"This is in the realm of Abstract Expressionism, but there's a figure
or a spirit in it. It represents the era of World War II when America ascended
to be the leading country in the art world.
7. "Seal Rock, " Albert Bierstadt, 1872
"This goes back to the fascination with the land. When you see this painting,
you see how dramatic the place is. He really captures the intensity and spirit
of the place."
8. "Sir Richard Arkwright," Mather Brown, 1790
"Richard Arkwright typified the kind of growth of the world and industrial
entrepreneurship . . . By the end of the 18th century, you began to hae more
self-made men ascending in wealth and power. This shows the transition of
English culture and American culture."
9. "An Imaginative Boy," Robert Henri, 1922
"This one is a really penetrating portrait."
10. "Lavender and Old Lace," Charles Burchfield, 1939
"Watercolors have a light and transparent quality, but Burchfield had
a way of making it dark."
In a list of artists that includes Norman Rockwell and Georgia O'Keeffe, casual
art fans might not immediately recognize the name Robert Henri. However, San
Angelo Museum of Fine Arts Director Howard Taylor said Henri's influence on
American art is immense.
Here are his facts.
Name: Robert Henri
Lived: 1865-1929.
Born: Cozad, Neb.
Famous works: "The Art Student," "The Beach Hat"
and "Blind Spanish Singer."
About Henri: Henri led a group of rebellious artist known as "The
Eight" who thought the European tradition made art effete and inaccessible.
Henri's group sought to embrace ordinary life in American art and lend a broader
relevance of art to the everyday man. He also aurhtored "The Art Sprit,"
a seminal book of art education.
Hendri quote: "Genius in not the possession of a limited few,
but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full
and free play of faculties, genuis will manifest itself."
Taylor says: Henri "really spanned many generations. You can see
his influence in at least 200 American artists. He took us from the old way
of art, which had much more form, to the new way of making art more instinctively."
An armed police officer stood guard in front of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts as movers unloaded baby-blue crates holding priceless works of American art.
Long moving vans snaked through the parking lot and backed up to the museum's front door as Martha Visney, museum board president, watched in anticipation.
''This is the biggest thing to happen in San Angelo,'' she said. ''Can you imagine Norman Rockwell right in front of your eyes?''
Norman Rockwell is only one of the American artists whose art is featured in the ''Visions of America'' exhibition this summer at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. Georgia O'Keefe, Grandma Moses and Winslow Homer are a few of the other well-known artists in this comprehensive exhibit that spans more than 250 years of American art history.
The ''Visions of America'' collection is traveling the United States while the New Britain Museum of Art in Connecticut, the institution that owns the pieces, is undergoing renovations. San Angelo is the tour's only stop in Texas.
''This is a really incredible exhibit we're getting,'' said Karen Zimmerly, museum collections manager. ''Usually small museums like San Angelo don't get exhibits of this caliber.''
The 150-piece collection is a panorama of American art that spans from the years before the Revolutionary War through the 1980s with a special emphasis on American Impressionism, which flourished from the late 1800s through World War I.
Howard Taylor, museum director, said the collection showcases the trends in art that are uniquely American. He said several of the pieces depict landscape scenes and the changing American aesthetic brought on by the Industrial Revolution. European artists had a long tradition of religious art and aristocratic portraiture, but their American counterparts had to forge a tradition of their own, Taylor said.
American artists ''were scene painters. They painted the beauty of the land,'' Taylor said. ''You also see some of the manifestations of a growing industrial nation.
That's part of the dichotomy of American life. You had this great beauty, but also pollution.''
The collection features works from artists of the Hudson River School movement that captured the beauty of the nation's landscapes as well as works from the Ashcan movement that looked at the ugliness of industrial America.
Zimmerly said American artists established a tradition rather quickly, but the prominence of industry over art forced several artists to seek their fortunes in Europe. She said America, nonetheless, had a tradition Europe couldn't emulate.
''America always had a dream,'' Zimmerly said. ''That's part of the culture and mythology of America. You could always go west and find your fortune and better yourself. There was hope. ... Instead of jewels and gilded things, we had beautiful landscapes, and eventually a tradition developed. People didn't have to go to Europe anymore.''
''Visions of America'' boasts works from the American masters, but the term ''master'' isn't always easily applied.
''It's very subjective,'' Zimmerly said. ''It's hard to come up with rules of what makes something great. A lot of times it's hard to know until time has passed, but I think a great painting shows the artist tapping into a truth. It has something you can feel. ... If a painting comes from a core of depth and integrity, it shows.''
Taylor said a master is one who is an innovator.
''There are always artists who break out in new directions and those who follow,'' he said. ''Museums are interested in those pioneers.''
Taylor said ''Visions of America'' is a representation of artists who embraced the pioneer spirit that is unique to America.
''It's almost like a family photo album except these are all original works, and they dig deeper into the subject matter,'' he said. ''When you see a photo of someone, you see an image of that person. When you see a painting of someone, you see more of that person's character.''
Copyright ©2005 San
Angelo Standard-Times
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If you go
What: ''Visions of America'' art exhibition.
Where: San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, 1 Love St.
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sundays, July 3-Sept. 25. (This exhibit only.)
How much: $6 general admission, $4 art museum members and $3 senior citizens, students and military.
What else: Admission is free from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. July 3.
More information: 653-3333.
Is it an overstatement to say that the arrival of the "Visions of America" collection at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts is the most important cultural event in the city's history? Maybe, but until someone makes an extremely persuasive case, we'll feel comfortable putting it at the top of the list.
The 150-piece collection includes the works of Norman Rockwell, Georgia O'Keeffe and other noted American painters. It is so expansive that museum officials have had a time getting it all to fit.
The show opens on Sunday and runs through Sept. 25. Admission is free the first day; after that, the cost is $6.
That's a fantastic bargain for the opportunity to view American masterpieces dating back 250 years. And the show is a fantastic opportunity for San Angelo in many ways.Most obvious is that it is rare for a city of our size and location to be able to display such art. That's thanks to the generosity of Ben And Beverly Stribling, who are underwriting much of the cost, and the contacts of museum director Howard Taylor.
The collection is on tour during remodeling at its home at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut. One of the 10 cities originally scheduled to host the exhibit dropped out, so the New Britain museum's director called Taylor, who called the Striblings, and the deal was made.
San Angelo is the only Texas stop on the tour, which provides another wonderful opportunity for the city. Taylor is marketing the show in newpapers and magazines in major cities, and as a result San Angelo and its museum will have a chance to make an impression on Texans who have never been here and know little about the city.
Finally, the exhibit provides an educational opportunity that few could have imagined would be possible. Not only will connoisseurs drink in the artwork, so will others who have never been exposed to such masterpieces, including children who might develop an appreciation that will make their lives richer and fuller.
For many West Texans, this probably is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the works of some of the nation's greatest painters. And it's a chance for San Angelo to shine on a stage where it doesn't often get to perform. We offer our thanks to Taylor and the Striblings for this wonderful gift to their hometown.
Copyright ©2005 San Angelo Standard-Times
'VISIONS OF AMERICA'
Employees of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts unpack a painting that is
part of the "Visions of America" exhibition to open this weekend.
This permanent collection of paintings from the New Britain (Conn.) Museum
of American Art includes 150 masterpieces spanning 250 years of American art
history. The exhibit is scheduled to open Sunday and run through Sept. 25.
Admission is free on Sunday, the exhibit will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. Afterward,
fees will be: $6 general admission, $4 art museum members and $3 senior citizens,
students and military. Starting Monday, hours are noon to 4 p.m. Sundays and
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. other days. To view sample art works from the exhibit, visit
www.SanAngeloStandardTimes.com.
Copyright ©2005 San
Angelo Standard-Times
Rockwell, O'Keeffe among works to come
Empty walls - they're every museum director's worst nightmare.
But Howard Taylor, director of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, buzzed around the bare walls of his museum's upstairs galleries earlier this week with excitement.
With the fervor of an orchestral conductor, he drew his hands down from the ceiling towards the walls, tracing imaginary lines of the light paths he would use to illuminate the drab interiors.
An empty wall? Not for Taylor. More like an empty canvas.
When the museum unveils works from some ot the nation's most celebrated painters on those walls on July 3, that canvas may very well be his masterpiece.
The 150-piece "Visions of America" collection, featuring works from Norman Rockwell, Georgia O'Keeffe, Winslow Homer and other American painters, arrives at the museum tomorrow (under armed guard, no less) from it's previouse stop, the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Cincinnati Art Museum curator Julie Aronson spoke of the collection Wednesday.
San Angelo Museum
of Fine Arts
One Love Street
San Angelo, Texas 76903
Fax: (325) 658 - 6800
Phone: (325) 653 -
3333
e-mail:
museum@samfa.org