UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Palmer Museum of Art will present a new exhibition titled "Morris Blackburn: Prints and Paintings in Process" from Jan. 17 through April 30.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Blackburn attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where he studied with, among others, Arthur B. Carles, one of the country’s leading proponents of modernism. The city remained his home throughout his career as an artist and as a teacher, a profession for which he was equally known and admired. Starting in the 1930s, Blackburn offered courses in painting and printmaking, first at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts), then the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and finally at his alma mater, PAFA, where he taught from 1952 until his death in 1979.
Blackburn’s affiliation with Carles, with whom he studied privately for a number of years following his graduation from PAFA, led to a healthy inclination toward abstraction. This propensity was further enhanced through his participation in the monthly workshops run by experimental printmaker Stanley William Hayter, starting in 1945, at the Print Club (today known as the Print Center). The majority of the drawings, prints, and paintings in the exhibition demonstrate in particular the discipline the Hayter experience brought to Blackburn’s creative process.
Also on view at the Palmer Museum of Art this spring are "Eva Watson-Schütze: Pictorialist Portraits," Jan. 10 through April 30; and "A Kaleidoscope of Color: Studio Glass at the Palmer," Jan. 31 through April 30.
The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State is located on Curtin Road and admission is free. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays and some holidays. The museum will have modified hours of noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 4, through Sunday, March 12. The museum will be closed Sunday, April 16, and Monday, May 1, through Monday, Sept. 4.
The Palmer Museum of Art receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.