Current Exhibits at the Polk Museum

 

The Sights and Sounds of Art:

Bells from the Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection

May 22 – September 26, 1999

Murray Gallery

On display in the Murray Gallery will be a selection of the museum’s extensive collection of bells from throughout the world. Works from Japan, India, France, Italy, Portugal, and other countries will show the variety of forms and materials used to create the sounds of bells. Recordings of each bell will play as viewers enter the gallery to give visitors a complete experience.

 

The Sights and Sounds of Art:

Paintings and Prints from the Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection

May 22 – September 26, 1999

Ledger Gallery

To complement the exhibition of bells in the Murray Gallery, the museum presents an exhibition of artworks that demonstrate the interconnections of music and the visual arts. Rhythms, tones, and harmonies can be as important to the expressive qualities of a visual artwork as they are to music. A variety of works will exemplify the different ways in which a painting or print can be understood as visual music.

 

Gregory Conniff: Twenty-Year Retrospective

June 19 – October 3, 1999

Perkins Gallery

This exhibition was originally organized under the title Gregory Conniff: 20 Years in the Field by the Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA. The exhibition consisted of 47 photographs; a 48-page catalogue was produced containing 2 essays and 28 images.

This exhibition was not conceived by the Sordoni Art Gallery as a travelling exhibition. Therefore, the PMA is working directly with Conniff, a resident of Madison, WI.

The exhibition consists of modestly sized, black-and-white gelatin silver prints. The title of each is simply the location (city, state) and the year. The works are a mix of landscapes: rural-wild, rural-agricultural, rural with buildings and/or figures, and industrial. The images are connected through Conniff’s use of compositional techniques such as balance, repetition, and tonal contrasts. Trees, figures, mobile homes, machine parts—all of these images serve Conniff’s idea that within every vista lies beauty.

Conniff received a B.A. at Columbia University and a law degree from University of Virginia. Two years later (1971) he began an independent apprenticeship with William Weege at Jones Road Print Shop. Conniff’s photographs are in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), MoMA, and the National Museum of American Art. He is a two-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Photographer’s Fellowship as well as a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

 

The Outside Eye: Contemporary Folk Art of the South

July 10 – October 10, 1999

Gallery I

The Outside Eye refers to the artistic vision of individuals who have no formal art training but who still possess great artistic energy and creativity. Each artist paints honestly from his or her own experience of the world, ranging from fervently religious to socially astute, from serious and poignant to playful and humorous. The materials used are often those that are most easily acquired: tin from chicken coops, aluminum sheeting, machine parts, cardboard, and wood. Other artists utilize more traditional materials such as acrylic paint or pastels. In all cases, whether viewing the Reverend Howard Finster’s detailed word-image combinations, Rudy Bostic’s powerful and beautiful religious imagery, or Charlie Lucas’s fun yet thoughtful found-object sculptures, visitors will experience art unmatched in terms of creativity and passion.

The group of artworks in The Outside Eye has been curated by the Polk Museum of Art from nearly 400 artworks in the collection of Lakeland native George Lowe (you might know him as the voice of The Cartoon Network’s Space Ghost.) Lowe began acquiring works by Folk artists in 1991, but he has already amassed a spectacular collection that includes over fifty works by Howard Finster of Georgia, the most renowned artist within the contemporary Folk art world. Other artists included in this diverse exhibition are Eddie Arning of Texas, the Reverend B.F. Perkins and Lonnie Holley of Alabama, and Mary T. Smith of Mississippi.

 

The American Expatriate: Selections from the French School

July 10 – October 10, 1999

Gallery II

Tampa area collectors Samuel and Karen Blatt have made art works from their collection available to the Polk Museum of Art for an exhibition of significant drawings by Camille Pisarro, Eugene Delacroix and etchings by James McNeill Whistler. This is a unique opportunity to encounter these important works on paper.

 

Crossed Purposes: Joyce and Max Kozloff

October 16 – December 5, 1999

Galleries I and II

Organized by The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH and by Joyce and Max Kozloff. Participation fee is $3,000 plus outgoing shipping (prorated to Albuquerque Museum). 100 copies of the exhibition catalogue have been ordered for $2.50 per copy.

Joyce Kozloff was a major figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s. She received a B.A from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. For a period of nearly 20 twenty years, she used 14 public art commissions to expand both the scale and accessibility of her work. She is featured in nearly every survey of late 20^th-century art or of women artists including Whitney Chadwick’s Women, Art and Society, Daniel Wheeler’s Art Since Mid-Century: 1945-Present, and Irving Sandler’s Art of the Postmodern Era. Collecting institutions include National Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, MoMA, and the Library of Congress.

Max Kozloff has been an important figure in art criticism for 4 decades. He received a B.A. from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in art history from University of Chicago. After completing his M.A., he also studied at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University from 1959-63. He was a writer for The Nation from 1961-68, Associate, Contributing, and Executive Editor of Artforum from 1963-76, and is the author of 9 books. He has received a Pulitzer Fellowship for Critical Writing, Fulbright Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship for Critical Writing, and NEA Grants for Art Criticism and Critical Writing. Since 1977 he has had over a dozen solo exhibitions and has participated in group exhibitions across the country and in Switzerland, Germany, France, Cuba, and England.

Crossed Purposes is the first formal joint exhibition of the artworks of Joyce and Max Kozloff. Joyce’s mixed media works and Max’s color photographs describe in different ways the post-modern world in which elements from apparently disconnected sources are brought together without disruption. Their use of intense colors, playful patterns, and rich textures unites both the disparate imagery used by each and the two artists themselves.

 

Miriam Schapiro: A Retrospective

December 11, 1999 – March 5, 2000

Galleries I and II

The Polk Museum of Art has organized a retrospective of paintings and painting / "femmage" works by Miriam Schapiro. Schapiro has been an important figure in art history both for her groundbreaking works that helped establish the Pattern and Decoration Movement and for her leading role in creating a prominent position for women in the contemporary art world.

The works in this exhibition span the years 1954 to 1997, chronicling her development from Abstract Expressionism to a more minimal, geometric style and finally to the lush, beautiful patterns and moving lines that have defined her works for the last 25 years. The curator of this exhibition, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, and the Polk Museum of Art have worked with Schapiro and her gallery representation, Steinbaum Krauss, as well as with public and private collectors, to bring together the best possible selection of paintings. This show will travel throughout the country after opening at the Polk Museum of Art.

 

The Passionate Observer: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten

December 18, 1999 – February 20, 2000

Perkins Gallery

 

Carl Van Vechten (1880 – 1964) received a B.A. in English from University of Chicago. He worked as a reporter, spending time in Paris as the New York Times correspondent. Van Vechten became the Times’s music critic and met the most important avant-garde artists of the time. He met Mabel Dodge in 1913, visited the Armory Show with her, and joined her inner circle at her 5^th Avenue apartment. In 1915 he published his first book of criticism. By 1930 he had published 8 additional volumes of music and literary criticism, 7 novels, 2 books on cats, 1 semi-autobiographical work, and over 200 magazine essays and book reviews.

It was during this time that he became a champion of the Harlem Renaissance and turned over much of his attention to photography. His personal knowledge of his sitters enabled him to create unique backdrops or props to suit their personalities. He continued photographing portraits until his death.

 

Glass Art by Susan B. Gott

January 8 – April 2, 2000

Murray and Ledger Galleries

Susan B. Gott is a glass artist and art educator who works out of her own Phoenix Glass Studio in Tampa. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculptural glass from Kent State University and has also studied at the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle. She is currently serving on the Glass Art Society Board of Directors. Gott has received a New Forms Florida Grant, has been a NICHE Award Finalist, and has received recognition from the Arts Councils of the State of Florida and Hillsborough County.

She employs various glass casting techniques and surface treatments to create works that embody her interest in mythological imagery, symbolism, and traditions from ancient cultures.

 

Paintings by Maggie Davis

February 26 – April 30, 2000

Perkins Gallery

Atlanta artist Maggie Davis lived, until recently, in Sarasota. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Florida International University and her Master of Fine Arts degree from University of South Florida. Early in her career she was influenced by the power of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the lush and sensitive color of Willem de Kooning. Likewise, she draws on the ideas and compositions of Kandinsky and the painting techniques of CJ zanne. Much of her work focuses on metaphysical concepts of renewal, rebirth, and transformation. The collection of the Polk Museum of Art includes two works by Davis.

 

Crossing Boundaries: Contemporary Art Quilts

November 11, 2000 – January 21, 2001

Galleries I and II

Organized by the Art Quilt Network, Yellow Springs, OH. Tour developed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services. Formed in 1986, the Art Quilt Network is made up of American and Canadian quiltmakers. Membership is limited to 60. Included among the 60 are four recipients of NEA Fellowships and one recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant. The show consists of 39 quilts ranging in size from 20" x 18.5" to 80" x 108".