Displaying items by tag: colby college museum of art

The early work of artist Alex Katz (b. 1927) is the subject of a major new exhibition at the Colby College Museum of Art, on view from July 11 through October 18, 2015. Brand-New & Terrific: Alex Katz in the 1950s explores the first decade of the artist’s career, a period characterized by fierce experimentation and innovation from which Katz’s signature style emerged. The exhibition is the first museum survey to focus on the artist’s output from this formative decade.

Curated by Diana Tuite, Katz Curator at the Colby Museum, Brand-New & Terrific draws from the Colby Museum’s deep collection of artworks by Alex Katz and will include many rarely seen loans from the artist and other public and private collections.

It has just been announced that Dallas Contemporary museum in Texas has named two new curators. Alison Gingeras will be its new adjunct curator and Justine Ludwig its new director of exhibitions and senior curator.

Ludwig has worked with many museums and art centers, including: the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Rose Art Museum, the Colby College Museum of Art, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

Last month, Colby College Museum of Art put on a view a 1968 painting by Joan Mitchell that museum director Sharon Corwin believes is the best example of abstract expressionism in Maine. Next month, the Portland Museum of Art will unveil an 8-foot-tall steel “Seven” sculpture by Robert Indiana, once rejected by the Prince of Monaco, in the pedestrian plaza out front.

The two works share few similarities, but they represent the latest high-profile acquisitions by two leading museums in Maine and highlight the challenges facing curators and museum directors as they shape collections across the state.

In both instances, the museums acquired the art because benefactors took personal interest in bringing it to Maine.

One morning last December, Jane Woodruff drove the 90 minutes to this town on the mid-coast, parked her Honda Civic on the road near a towering wooden sculpture, and claimed a slice of the Bernard Langlais estate.

Woodruff, a retiree and amateur photographer, packed three wooden reliefs in the trunk and headed to Pittsfield, Maine, where, within days, the works — none larger than 1 by 4 ½ feet — had been installed near the town library’s circulation desk.

Three down, 3,297 to go. That’s the number of works that are being distributed across Maine in what should be called the summer of Langlais. A series of shows and installations, dedicated to a Mainer most famous for the 62-foot wooden Indian sculpture that sits in the town of Skowhegan, is launching this month.

Colby College in Waterville, Maine will unveil its 26,000-square foot Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion on Saturday, July 13, 2013 at an opening event for friends of the institution followed by an open house on Sunday. One of the inaugural exhibitions, The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College, will present over 280 works gifted to the Colby College Museum of Art by major supporters, Peter and Paula Lunder. Mr. Lunder is a life overseer of the institution while Mrs. Lunder is a life trustee of the board.

The other exhibitions that will be on view include a selection of Chinese art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Lunder-Colville Collection; a presentation of American folk art weathervanes; paintings from the Alex Katz Foundation; a survey of abstract works by John Marin; and an exhibition exploring the design of the new pavilion, which adds 10,000 square feet of gallery space to the museum.

The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College, which includes works by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alexander Calder and Romare Bearden will be the highlight of the museum’s opening festivities.