The Montclair Art Museum Presents Abstraction in American Art

Written by Bernice Coldharbor Wednesday, 11 January 2012 23:27

Montclair, New Jersey.- The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) proudly presents "Patterns, Systems, Structures: Abstraction in American Art". The exhibition is being staged in two phases. Part One opened on December 3rd, 2011, in the McMullen Gallery with works from the late 19th century through the 20th, including Native American art; Part Two opens February 12th 2012, in Lehman Court and the Shelby Gallery with additional works representing 20th-century abstraction. The exhibition runs through May 19th 2013, and is organized by MAM’s chief curator, Gail Stavitsky. The exhibition is drawn entirely from the permanent collection of the Montclair Art Museum and explores the rich variety of approaches to abstraction in American art.

Since the late 19th century, painters and sculptors have not always aimed to depict persons and objects representationally. Artists moved toward abstract visual expression as they experimented with unconventional materials and techniques and developed visual languages of form, color, and line that exist independently from their subjects’ natural appearance. Some artists deliberately altered appearances by stretching or bending forms, breaking up shapes, and giving objects unlikely textures or colors. Others looked to aspects of our person-made world, such as architecture, to invest their compositions with a sense of solidity, monumentality, and structure. Artists have made these transformations in an effort to communicate universal or unseen spiritual aspects of existence and of modern life that they cannot convey through representational treatments. Stavitsky said: “This exhibition has provided a great opportunity to re-examine the permanent collection and show works that have seldom or never been exhibited before. It offers new perspectives by juxtaposing historical and contemporary art. Rarely, for example, do you see the 19th-century masters George Inness and James Abbott McNeill Whistler in the company of American modernists like Morgan Russell and Joseph Stella, nor mid-century artists like Joseph Albers and his student Richard Anuskiewicz with the current artist James Siena.”



The Montclair Art Museum was one of the country’s first museums primarily engaged in collecting American art (including the work of contemporary, nonacademic artists) and among the first dedicated to the study and creation of a significant ethnographic art collection. This pioneering spirit still reverberates in the Museum’s pursuit and presentation of high-quality art that characterizes and celebrates America’s diversity. The collection has grown to over 12,000 works. The American collection, which began with a gift of 30 paintings from William T. Evans, a Montclair civic leader, comprises paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and sculpture dating from the 18th century to the present, and features excellent works by Benjamin West, Asher B. Durand, George Inness, John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as younger and emerging artists such as Louise Lawler, Chakaia Booker, Whitfield Lovell, and Willie Cole. The Museum’s superb holdings of traditional and contemporary American Indian art and artifacts represent the cultural achievements in weaving, pottery, wood carving, jewelry, and textiles of indigenous Americans from seven major regions—Northwest Coast, California, Southwest, Plains, Woodlands, Southeast, and the Arctic. The collection was begun by Annie Valentine Rand and carried on by her philanthropic daughter Florence Rand Lang, one of the Museum’s founders, and continues to grow with commissioned works, gifts, and purchases that celebrate the vitality and modernity of traditional forms and beliefs. Among the contemporary American Indian artists represented are Tony Abeyta, Dan Namingha, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Allan Houser, Bentley Spang, and Marie Watt. The Museum’s extensive education programs serve a wide public and, often in collaboration with cultural and community partners, bring artists, performers, and scholars to the Museum on a regular basis. MAM’s Yard School of Art is the leading regional art school, offering a multitude of comprehensive classes for kids, teens, adults, seniors, and professional artists. One of the first museums to be accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Montclair Art Museum welcomes more than 65,000 visitors annually to its acclaimed exhibitions and programs. The expansion and progress of the Museum has been made possible by the participation, generosity, and farsightedness of its founders, trustees, members, and friends. Their support has helped to make the Montclair Art Museum the vital institution it is today. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.montclairartmuseum.org

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