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February Issue 2007
Columbia Museum of Art Brings Outstanding Range of Modern Masters to South Carolina in 2007
This spring the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC, showcases art from some of the best-known modern masters of the 19th and 20th centuries from three prestigious American museums. Two exhibitions from the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, FL, open Mar. 2 and are on view through July 17, 2007 - From Pissarro to Picasso: European Works on Paper and A Foreign Affair: American Artists Abroad. The exhibit, Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series from The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, opens Apr. 14 and runs through June 24, 2007. Two Renoir portraits are on loan from The Art Institute of Chicago from Apr. 25 to Oct. 1, 2007. The Birds of America: Audubon Prints by Julius Bien, a focus gallery installation from the Columbia Museum of Art's collection, is on view through May 13, 2007.
Karen Brosius, Columbia Museum of Art's executive director said, "We are so excited to bring this springtime visual feast to South Carolina. Nearly 80 superb works of art will be on view for three months, and never have so many masters graced our gallery walls at one time."
From Pissarro to Picasso: European Works
on Paper includes 31 watercolors, pastels and drawings from
the leading European artists of the late 19th and early 20th century:
Matisse, Picasso, Pissarro, Braque, Gauguin, Léger, Chagall,
Degas, Renoir, Modigliani and Miró, among others. The works
included in the exhibition exemplify many of the major artistic
movements in Europe from the early days of Impressionism with
drawings by Renoir and Pissarro, to Post-Impressionism with early
work by Picasso and landscapes by Dufy and Signac. Cubism, Primitivism
and Surrealism are also represented.
From Pissarro to Picasso: European Works on Paper is sponsored
by Dr. Suzan D. Boyd and Mr. M. Edward Sellers.
A Foreign Affair: American Artists Abroad, also from the Norton Museum, shows work by American
artists influenced by the European artists in From Pissarro
to Picasso. This companion exhibition explores the places
and people depicted by American artists as they traveled abroad
to such countries as France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium,
Spain, Ireland and Greenland. The 20 paintings, watercolors, works
on paper and one sculpture include art by Mary Cassatt, William
Merritt Chase, Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent, John Marin, Alfred
Maurer and Maurice Prendergast.
Drawn from the Columbia Museum of Art's collection and augmenting
the exhibition are South Carolina artists who worked abroad during
the same time period such as Blondelle Malone, Anna Heyward Taylor,
William Henry Johnson and Caroline Guignard.
Support for A Foreign Affair: American Artists Abroad has been
provided by Forest Lake Travel.
From Pissarro to Picasso: European Works on Paper and A Foreign Affair: American Artists Abroad are organized by the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. The Norton Museum of Art is internationally known for its distinguished collection of European, American and Chinese art, contemporary art and photography. From its founding the Norton has been famous for its masterpieces of 19th and 20th century painting and sculpture by European artists.
The exhibit, Jacob Lawrence's The Migration Series: Selections from The Phillips Collection includes 16 panels from Lawrence's renowned series depicting the migration of African-Americans from the rural south to the urban North during and after World War I. An American epic told through vivid patterns and colors, the complete narration of the 60 panels of The Migration Series - now jointly owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Phillips Collection - portrays the story of people seeking a better life, and the captions for each image combine history, sociology and poetry in a visual narrative.
One of the great storytellers of his generation, Lawrence's powerful style brings the Great Migration to life in a momentous visual journey and chronicles the struggle, strength and perseverance of African-Americans in search of a better life in the North.
The presenting sponsor for the Columbia exhibition is SCANA Corporation; supporting sponsors are Colonial Supplemental Insurance, Katherine and Clarence Davis, Shirley Mills and Heyward Bannister, and DESA, Inc. This exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, and has been made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of the American Masterpieces program, with additional support from the Henry Luce Foundation.
The Phillips Collection, opened in 1921, is America's first museum of modern art. Offering a renowned collection of nearly 2,500 works by American and European impressionist and modern artists, The Phillips is internationally recognized for its incomparable art.
RENOIR! is an installation of two Impressionist paintings loaned to the Columbia Museum of Art from The Art Institute of Chicago. The two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir are portraits of children - Jean Renoir Sewing, from c. 1899, depicts Renoir's second son, who became one of the leading French filmmakers of the mid-20th century. Lucie Bérard (Child in White), from 1883, depicts the sister of another Renoir portrait, Portrait of a Boy (André Bérard), from c. 1879, that is featured in the exhibition From Pissarro to Picasso. The children's father, Paul Bérard, was one of Renoir's most important patrons. One of the great art museums of the world, The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, houses a collection spanning 5,000 years of artistic expression from cultures around the world, and the school's graduate program is continually ranked as one of the best in the country.
The Birds of America: Audubon Prints by Julius Bien features four prints made using Bien's original copperplates. Hired by John James Audubon's son, John Woodhouse Audubon, Bien only completed 106 of the 435 plates of The Birds of America due to the outbreak of the Civil War. Audubon, an American artist and naturalist, captured the drama of nature in his watercolors and prints. Rather than relying on specimens, he drew his birds from life whenever possible. In addition, he paid particular attention to the birds' aberrant plumages, food, habitat preferences and their actions and interactions. Striving for action and reality, he created a new approach to painting birds by which modern bird artists are still measured.
This significant presentation of works is on view during the first Columbia Festival of the Arts that takes place throughout Columbia, SC, from Apr. 27 to May 6, 2007. For more information about the Columbia Festival of the Arts, visit (www.columbiafestivalofthearts.com).
For further information check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Museum at 803/799-2810 or visit (www.columbiamuseum.org).
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