The National Academy Museum Reopening Features a Will Barnet Retrospective

Written by Gillian Sumner Friday, 30 December 2011 21:34

New York City.- The National Academy Museum reopens to the public after major refurbishment on September 16th. Amongst an array of new exhibitions, the museum will be showing the first New York retrospective of Will Barnet's work. "Will Barnet at 100" will explore the dialogue between figuration and abstraction that has defined Barnet’s remarkable 80-year career. A painter, printmaker and teacher who has worked largely outside the various schools of Modernism, Barnet has made significant and unique contributions to American art in the realms of both abstraction and figuration. Will Barnet at 100 will feature approximately 45 works from private and museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Montclair Art Museum, and the Neuberger Museum of Art. "Will Barnet at 100" will be on view at the museum from September 16th through December 31st.

Born in 1911 in Beverly, Massachusetts, Barnet knew by the age of ten that he wanted to be an artist. As a student he studied with Philip Leslie Hale at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and viewed first-hand John Singer Sargent at work on the murals of the Boston Public Library. In 1930 Barnet studied at the Art Students League of New York, with Stuart Davis, beginning his long association with the school. Here he concentrated on painting as well as printmaking, and in 1936 he became the official printer for the Art Students League. There, he later instructed students in the graphic arts at the school and taught alongside the likes of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Robert Beverly Hale and Richard Pousette-Dart. Barnet continued his love of teaching with positions at the Cooper Union, at Yale University, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Barnet's works, while remaining universal, reference his own personal history complete with images of his wife, his daughter and their family pets. As James Thomas Flexner wrote, Barnet’s work “makes us experience the interplay between the personal and the universal.” While remaining representational, the simple elegance of the figures and their flat surfaces reflect his exploration with abstraction. He was a key figure in the New York movement called Indian Space Painting, artists who based their abstract and semi-abstract work on Native American art.

For many years he pursued abstraction in painting, then a fashionable trend in the USA. His later work returned to figurative painting. He is probably best known for his enigmatic portraits of family, made from the 1970s onwards, notable the Silent Seasons series. However, his earlier works maintain an edginess and brooding contemplation that is even more remarkable when compared with the more placid and pretty works which followed his second marriage. His works have entered virtually every major public collection in the United States, including, the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has been the subject of over eighty solo exhibitions held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design Museum, the National Museum of American Art, Montclair Art Museum,and the Boca Raton Museum of Art among others. Barnet has been the recipient of numerous awards including the first Artist's Lifetime Achievement Award Medal given on the occasion of the National Academy of Design’s 175th anniversary, the College Art Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art’s Lippincott Prize, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters’ Childe Hassam Prize. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Design, The Century Association, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Barnet has defined an artistic career that, in the words of Robert Doty, “has always gone beyond the limitations of modern art because his work affirms a faith in life.”


Founded in 1825, the National Academy is the only institution of its kind that integrates a museum, art school, and association of artists and architects dedicated to creating and preserving a living history of American Art. Modeled after the Royal Academy in London, the National Academy was founded with the simple yet powerful mission to “promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition.” For the very first time in this country, an arts institution was conceived with artists and architects at its core. Today, with its museum, art school, and association of artists and architects – the National Academicians – the Academy sees its original mission realized through a contemporary lens. It is a continually evolving testament to the transformative power of art, an institution that sheds light on over 7,000 great works, a thriving forum for education, intergenerational dialogue and debate, and a source of vibrant exhibitions. The National Academy is an organization where tradition is celebrated and new visionaries embraced, connecting the past, present, and future of American art. Funded by generous bequests from Eleanor D. Popper, a former student of the School, and author Geoffrey Wagner in memory of his wife, Colleen Browning Wagner, an American realist painter and National Academician (NA), the National Academy’s newly renovated spaces open September 2011. The renovation will revitalize the Academy’s entrance on Fifth Avenue, include new student and faculty galleries, enhance the second and fourth floor galleries and expand the public assembly space. Visit the academy's website at ... http://www.nationalacademy.org

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