View the Annual Student Exhibition
>| View the Annual Student Exhibition
> |
|
|||||
 |
Jacob Lawrence's Hiroshima Morris Gallery, Historic Landmark Building August 1 – December 28, 2008 In 1982, Sidney Shiff, owner of the Limited Editions Club, New York commissioned the artist Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) to make illustrations for a book of his choice. Lawrence selected Hiroshima (1946), John Hersey’s extraordinary account of six survivors of the first atomic bomb attack. The result was a series of eight paintings inspired by but which transcend Hersey’s text to rank among Lawrence’s most powerful visual statements. Now part of the Academy’s permanent collection, the Hiroshima series (1983) is Lawrence’s devastating evocation of the physical and emotional impact of the Hiroshima bombing. This intimate exhibition will place the Hiroshima series in the context of Lawrence’s career as an empathetic chronicler of history and his own time. Rather than “illustrate” the text he selected, Lawrence drew on his own experience in urban communities to imagine the bomb’s “noiseless flash” as it destroyed lives and irrevocably changed our culture. Conceived towards the end of his long and multifaceted career, the paintings bring together numerous overlapping formal and narrative concerns in a way that distinguishes the series from his earlier work. The settings are universal, the identities of the victims beyond issues of race or nationality, politics or religion. They achieve a poignancy that is grounded in Lawrence’s life-long engagement with humanistic themes. Left: Jacob Lawrence, Family (detail), 1983, tempera and gouache on paper; 23 x 17 1/2 in. Alexander Harrison Fund, 2008.3.2 |
||||
 |
"Peace, Liberty, and Independence": 225 Years After the Treaty of Paris Historic Landmark Building September 11 – October 12, 2008 The Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolution and established sovereignty for the thirteen former American colonies. This exhibition marks the 225th anniversary of that landmark in our history with a display of paintings, watercolors, prints, documents, and weapons that demonstrate how visual art and language played a role in winning the Revolution and establishing a national aesthetic in the early Republic. Works of art include Paul Revere’s incendiary hand-colored engraving of the Boston Massacre, entitled The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street (1770), an event which became a catalyst for the Revolution and claimed the moral high ground for the colonials. Left: Henry Benbridge, The Death of Colonel Owen Roberts, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. Gift in Memory of Thomas C.W. and Sally R. Roberts, 2001.8 |
||||
 |
Peter Saul: A Retrospective Fisher Brooks Gallery, Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building October 18, 2008 – January 4, 2009 Long considered the quintessential “bad boy” of postwar American art, Peter Saul (born 1934) is also among the most innovative and influential artists of his generation. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is the only east coast stop for what will be the most comprehensive overview of Peter Saul’s career. Acclaimed as a progenitor of Pop Art, Saul was inspired to a creative breakthrough by a copy of Mad magazine and championed early on by the surrealist painter Roberto Matta. Saul has always forged his own path, creating often difficult, funny, and trenchant works addressing both personal foibles and the most important historical issues of our time. His twisted comic-book forms, artificially hot colors, controversial subject matter, and unquenchable ambition to provoke strong feelings through painting have kept him on the edges of the art world while also preserving, for over forty years, the edgy freshness of his work. The exhibition features major paintings and rarely seen drawings from 1960 to the present, including his early “icebox” paintings, several epic historical canvases critiquing American involvement in Vietnam and the Middle East, homages to Salvador Dalí and Thomas Hart Benton, satiric works poking fun at the art world’s sacred cows, and still more that painfully evoke the multiple psychic hazards of being an aging American male. A fully illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition including new critical texts on Saul’s work by Dan Cameron, Michael Duncan, and Robert Storr. Peter Saul: A Retrospective is organized by the Orange County Museum of Art and curated by Dan Cameron; coordinated in Philadelphia by Robert Cozzolino. This project has been supported by a grant from the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by The University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Peter Saul (born 1934), Icebox #1 (detail), 1960, oil on canvas, 69 x 58 1/2 in., Harkey Family Collection, Dallas |
||||
 |
George Tooker: A
Retrospective January 30-April 5, 2009 Fisher Brooks Gallery, Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building This exhibition brings together approximately sixty paintings and drawings spanning George Tooker’s entire career. Born in Brooklyn in 1920, Tooker is among the most influential postwar American figure painters. His instantly recognizable, often mysterious imagery ranges from complex works of “social protest” such as Subway (1950; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) to an intimate series of couples illuminated within open windows. From the beginning of his career Tooker has examined profound human experiences such as love, death, aging, loneliness, joy, and grief, often combining the style and techniques of late-Medieval painting with those of European surrealism to illuminate modern experience. This exhibition, Tooker’s first museum retrospective in three decades, will provide a comprehensive examination of his place in American art and reveal the full scope of his achievement. Jointly organized by the National Academy Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Merrell and including essays by Pennsylvania Academy curator Robert Cozzolino, as well as Anna C. Chave, Thomas H. Garver, Marshall Price, Jonathan Weinberg, and Melissa Wolfe. A symposium will coincide with the exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy in order to invite new perspectives on Tooker and his place in American art. The Philadelphia presentation of George Tooker: A Retrospective is generously supported by the Richard C. von Hess Foundation. Additional support provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. George Tooker, Dark Angel (detail), 1996; egg tempera on gesso board, 24 x 19 inches, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Henry C. Gibson Fund |
