Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
Spring 2008
Resonance from the Past
February 19–May 11, 2008
Crest Mask: Ciwara Kun or Sogoni Kun, Ciwara association, Bamana peoples, Bougouni or Diola region, Mali. Wood, h. 16 3/8 inches. New Orleans Museum of Art. Bequest of Victor K. Kiam. 77.241. Photograph courtesy of the Museum for African Art.
Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art
February 19–May 11, 2008
Resonance from the Past consists of nearly 100 works from the New Orleans Museum of Art's extensive collection of African art. The exhibition highlights works from Central and West Africa and includes ancestral masks and figures, musical instruments, and ceramics, as well as fabric and beadwork costumes. This exceptional selection has been touring the country since 2005 while the African galleries at NOMA have been undergoing extensive renovation. The exhibition was on view last year at the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution.
Resonance from the Past is a collaboration between the Museum for African Art, New York, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Frank Herreman is the curator. The presentation of the exhibition at the Palmer is made possible through the generous support of the Friends of the Palmer Museum of Art, as well as support from the Equal Opportunity Planning Committee, Diversity Committee of the College of Arts and Architecture, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Paul Robeson Cultural Center, Department of Anthropology, Department of Art History, and Africana Research Center.
Detail: Stele, 2004, pastel on paper, 41 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches, by G. Daniel Massad (American, b. 1946). Collection of the Palmer Museum of Art.
G.Daniel Massad: Loading the Work
February 24–May 25, 2008
Working out of his studio in south-central Pennsylvania, G. Daniel Massad has become one of the best-known contemporary artists working in the pastel medium. With arduous technique, Massad "loads" his works in pastel with meanings that may find no better outlet, no clearer articulation, than in his carefully layered and meticulously inscribed picture planes. The works contain several literary, artistic, and intensely personal references. These sumptuous drawings contain yet another significant layer of vernacular and universal symbolism, formed by a labyrinth of darkness and variegated surfaces, prompting our reconsideration of preconceived ideas of realism and the commonplace.
Summer 2008
Flatiron Building, 1973, etching, 35 1/4 x 12 3/4 inches, by Richard Haas (American, b. 1936). Photograph courtesy of John Szoke Editions.
Richard Haas: Print and Preservation
June 3–September 14, 2008
Richard Haas is well known to Penn State. In 2005, he completed a large mural, commissioned by the Class of 2003 and mounted in the HUB-Robeson Center, which depicts the past fifty years of the University's history. Haas began his career, however, as a printmaker interested in capturing the architectural heritage of New York City. This exhibition presents a survey of Haas' prints. Starting with the early drypoints of single façades, it follows his career, in a variety of print mediums, as he gradually widened his parameters to allow first adjoining structures, then entire neighborhoods, and finally broad panoramic views of the city.
Untitled, from the Bay Sky Porch portfolio, 1979, chromogenic print, 8 x 10 inches, by Joel Meyerowitz (American, b. 1938). Gift of Johnathan Eichner. Collection of the Palmer Museum of Art.
Joel Meyerowitz: Bay Sky Porch
June 3–September 28, 2008
The constant change and unpredictability of the sea attracted photographer Joel Meyerowitz to Cape Cod and the city of Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the mid-1970s. After beginning his artistic career as a street photographer in New York, Meyerowitz replaced his 35mm with an 8 x 10 inch view camera and embraced the slower pace of life found on the Cape. This exhibition, drawn from the permanent collection, presents a selection of Meyerowitz's meditative photographs from this extensive series grouped collectively under the title Bay Sky Porch .
Miniature Worlds: Art from India
June 15–August 10, 2008
Khalil Allah Khan Bahadur, c. 1660, opaque watercolor on paper, 18 7/8 x 14 7/8 x 1 inch. Photograph courtesy of The Art Complex Museum.
Watercolors, drawings, and sculpture spanning 400 years of Indian history will be on view in Miniature Worlds: Art from India . Drawn from the extensive permanent collection of The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Massachusetts, the exhibition illuminates various forms of Indic media from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries as well as aspects of its religion and history.
All of the works in the exhibition are from the Leland C. and Paula Wyman Collection at The Art Complex Museum, an extraordinary collection of 300 paintings acquired by the museum in the late 1960s. Miniature Worlds is a program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance and The National Endowment for the Arts.
