American Menagerie
August 16 through November 9, 2008
From the earliest examples of American art until the present day, images of animals serve as vehicles for meaning. Native and exotic creatures alike help artists to explore issues of identity: the quality and nature of being American or foreign, human or beast, wild or civilized, innocent or worldly. These are all issues that artists grapple with in American Menagerie. Featuring 25 works drawn primarily from the Museum's permanent collection, this exhibition features artists such as Dahlov Ipcar, Bernard Langlais, Will Barnet, Wendy Kindred, Scott Leighton, and Edward Hicks.
The exhibition also includes a special group of works related to political cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman, who is credited with the creation of the "Teddy Bear." Early in his long career, Berryman created this loveable and timeless character as both a personification of and a fictional companion to President Theodore Roosevelt. Illustrations by Berryman and a group of political pins featuring the teddy bear, all on loan from an important private collection, add another layer to the idea of American animals in this election year.
The drawings, postcards, and ephemera on view in this section of the exhibition relate to political cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman, who is credited with the creation of the "Teddy Bear." The figure of the little bear first appeared in 1902 in a cartoon Berryman drew for the Washington Post. Drawing the Line in Mississippi depicted a steadfast Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a cowering bear cub. Eventually the cub became both a personification of and a fictional companion to President Roosevelt in Berryman's cartoons for the Post and the Washington Star. Berryman's witty, incisive, and unfailingly endearing images add another layer to our understanding of American animals in this election year.
Supporting Documents
American Menagerie Research.pdf
Supporting Links
André Kertész: On Reading
August 30 through November 16, 2008
This exhibition will celebrate a series of 104 photographs made by internationally renowned photographer André Kertész (1894–1985). Taken in Hungary, France, and the United States over a 50-year period. Kertész's photographs illustrate his love of the poetry and choreography of life in public, and also private moments at home, tapping the power of reading as a universal pleasure. Sturdily balanced between geometric composition and playful observation, it is easy to understand how these glimpses of everyday people and places would come to heavily influence photography as an art form. The photographs in the exhibition are drawn from the collection of Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago.
André Kertész: On Reading is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago and toured by CATE.
Supporting Documents
Supporting Links
David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University
PBS: American Masters
Georgia O’Keeffe and the Camera: The Art of Identity
June 12, 2008 through September 7, 2008
This exhibition of 60 photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe and 18 works by the artist will address the relationship between her art and photographs made of her over the course of a long career. For the first time, the exhibition will pair paintings and photographs to establish two opposing public images of the artist. Georgia O’Keeffe and the Camera will include works by famous photographers such as Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Eliot Porter, Todd Webb, and Arnold Newman. The exhibition will also include examples of O’Keeffe’s paintings and works on paper that mark major moments in the development of her art: the early abstract drawings, the first landscapes in New Mexico from the 1930s, and the late architectural studies of her homes at the Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu.
This exhibition is made possible by the generosity of Scott and Isabelle Black. Corporate sponsorship is provided by Bank of America, with additional support from The Bear Bookshop, Marlboro, Vermont. Media support is provided by WCSH 6 and the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.
Supporting Documents
Research.pdf
Supporting Links
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Large Scale Works in the Great Hall
Supporting Documents
David Row and __Split Infinitive__.pdf
Supporting Links
Selected N. C. Wyeth Masterworks
Ongoing Exhibition
The Portland Museum of Art presents eight figurative N. C. Wyeth masterworks in an exhibition that explores the artist’s role in the creation of a mythic American historical landscape. Robust, intelligent, and extraordinarily productive, N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945) created bold imagery that animated poems, novels, and historical texts by such well-known authors as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Fenimore Cooper, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The most famous illustrator of his day, Wyeth’s vision of the past imbued his art with a heroic quality that colored the very way a generation viewed its nation.
Supporting Documents
ncwyeth.pdf
gtwyeth_roberts.pdf
Supporting Links