Tag: permanent collection

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Treasures from the Vault: William Richard Crutchfield

Let’s start off with a question: when you, reader, go to a museum, what kind of art do you expect to encounter? Serious, dramatic works providing extensive commentary on social constructs relevant to the artist’s time period or works relevant to the present day? Well, those kinds of works will naturally be there, but how often do you hope to stumble across artwork that’s been created just for fun? If you’ve ever been in the mood for a more lighthearted art experience, today you’re in luck!

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Treasures from the Vault: Ernest Withers

Professors from universities around the area bring their students to the Print and Drawing Study Center at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art to see works on paper from the permanent collection that are currently in storage. One of the most frequent requests is for the I Am a Man portfolio by African American photographer Ernest C. Withers (1922-2007). He is best known for his works documenting the Civil Rights Movement. Our Curator of Print and Drawings, Sachi, provides the background for Withers' photography career and the impact he had on the movement for equality.

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Treasures from the Vault: Dale Enochs’s “Double Exposure”

Today’s ‘treasure’ is a little different than others we’ve selected. Dale Enochs’s Double Exposure is set apart from other treasures we’ve featured because they don’t often leave the vault. On the contrary—this sculpture is permanently installed in our atrium! It may seem as though I’m betraying the identity of this blog series, but I ask you this – how often do we become so used to seeing a work of art that we no longer take notice of its presence? My task today is to compel you to give this particular work a second look.

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Treasures from the Vault: Ginny Ruffner

A common misconception about working in museums is that you get to touch the stuff, whether artworks or artifacts. When I lead a tour a common question is: “What is the coolest piece of art you’ve gotten to handle?” As an educator, I have to explain, I’m not allowed to touch the stuff either! While my job requires handling of reproductions, I rarely get to to into the vault and see, or write about, the various treasures we have. Read on to see which treasure from the vault caught the eye of our writer!

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Treasures from the Vault: Tea and Coffee Set

The temperature is dropping and the leaves are finally changing; it’s a favorite time of year for many! The hot and muggy days of summer are gone, and it’s finally sweater weather, which all of my coworkers know I’m very excited about. But, more importantly, it’s hot tea and coffee weather, too! I know, I know, you can enjoy delicious, hot drinks throughout the year, but, let’s be honest, they’re best when it’s crisp and cool outside. In honor of this season of change, our treasure from the vault this week is an exquisite tea and coffee set.

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Treasures from the Vault: Hollis Sigler

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so I decided to select a work by Hollis Sigler in loving memory of her and in honor of the multitude of breast cancer survivors and those who are no longer with us. This disease has become far too familiar for many of us, whether it has been faced firsthand or experienced through the care of family members or friends. Read on to see how Sigler confronted her illness in her artwork and helped further the conversation around breast cancer research.

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Treasures from the Vault: Chuck Sperry

Today’s treasure comes from one of FWMoA’s hottest artists, Chuck Sperry. Sperry has been on the rock poster scene for over 20 years and his unique style has resulted in legions of fans who flock to his gallery openings for the chance to purchase one of his sumptuous prints. The women he features are synonymous with fantasized beauty – full lips, mysterious expressions, lithe figures, and perfectly tousled red ringlets. Justice, the print in FWMoA’s collection, embodies Sperry’s oeuvre.

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Treasures from the Vault: Janet Fish

Fish’s decision to focus on still life painting was an interesting one. For centuries there has been a hierarchy of subject matter in art – histories or dramas have been the most highly regarded, followed by portraiture, and then the lowly still life. This latter genre was often viewed as quaint and trite, something light and palatable that female painting hobbyists could do in their spare time when not taking care of the home or their children. While some artists have attempted to raise the status of still lives through history – 17th and 18th century Spanish and Flemish still life painters, for example, whose paintings rival photography in their level of detail and perfection – the genre failed to ever move up the ladder. Fish likely knew that she was tackling an almost impossible subject, but it’s possible that that’s what drew her to it: in a modern world with an abundance of abstract painters, still life painting was a true challenge that she could make her own.

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Treasures from the Vault: Margaret Burroughs

Burroughs’ work in the visual arts took the form of painting, some sculpture, and a large body of relief prints.  In Black Venus, Burroughs surely sought to reinterpret Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli’s iconic Birth of Venus.  Dr. Alain Locke, along with other Harlem Renaissance intellectuals and writers, set out to redefine their image as the New Negro, which would counter the stereotypes associated with Jim Crow America.  They challenged artists to forge a new, authentic iconography for a re-envisioned identity.  The arts would draw inspiration from the South, the Caribbean, and pre-colonial Africa—their true cultural roots.  Burroughs borrowed compositional elements from Botticelli’s painting of the classical goddess rising from the sea, but provides a renewed definition of beauty by replacing her fair hair and complexion with a rich, dark skin tone. 

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