Crocker Art Museum Announces Inaugural Exhibitions for Expanded Museum

Written by Boyce Donaldson Wednesday, 07 March 2012 21:45

SACRAMENTO, CA.- This fall the Crocker Art Museum will celebrate the opening of its 125,000-square-foot expansion, designed by Charles Gwathmey, with a retrospective of the work of Sacramento native Wayne Thiebaud. On view beginning October 10, 2010, Wayne Thiebaud: Homecoming is one of a series of special exhibitions that will inaugurate the galleries in the Crocker’s new Teel Family Pavilion. Featuring more than 50 paintings and drawings spanning the artist’s career, Wayne Thiebaud celebrates the work of Sacramento’s most renowned artist.

The opening exhibition program also includes: A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, an exhibition drawn from one of the finest early collections of master drawings in the United States; and Tomorrow’s Legacies: Gifts Celebrating the Next 125 Years, a diverse display of 125 promised gifts to the Crocker, including Tang Dynasty sculpture, French Barbizon paintings, American Impressionism, and contemporary California art.

“To celebrate the opening of the new Crocker, we’ve organized a series of exhibitions that embrace our history and look toward our future,” said Lial Jones, The Mort and Marcy Friedman Director of the Crocker Art Museum. “Our opening program encompasses longstanding collecting areas, including master drawings and ceramics, and also debuts new collections that have come to the Crocker through the generous support of our donors. We’re especially thrilled to be presenting a survey of the work of Wayne Thiebaud, an extraordinary artist and longtime friend of the museum.”

Wayne Thiebaud: Homecoming
October 10, 2010 to November 28, 2010
This new exhibition is a homecoming for both the artist and the Crocker Art Museum. In 1951, the Crocker presented Thiebaud’s first solo exhibition, Influences on a Young Painter. The Museum’s current major retrospective, featuring approximately 50 paintings and drawings, spans the entirety of Thiebaud’s career from the artist’s early works to new paintings created in 2010. Organized by Thiebaud and Crocker Chief Curator Scott A. Shields, and drawn in part from the traveling exhibition Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting, the Crocker exhibition will include many works not previously displayed, with special attention given to Sacramento places and personalities.

A Pioneering Collection:
Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum
October 10, 2010 to February 6, 2011
The Crocker Art Museum holds one of the finest early collections of master drawings in the United States, purchased for the most part in 1869–71 by the Museum’s founders, E. B. and Margaret Crocker. A Pioneering Collection explores the beauty, quality and scholarly importance of the collection with 56 drawings, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Fra Bartolommeo, Anthonie van Dyck and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. New acquisitions and new discoveries are also featured. The exhibition opens in conjunction with the Museum’s new Anne and Malcolm McHenry Works on Paper Study Center, and was organized by Crocker curator William Breazeale, who is the lead author for the exhibition catalogue.

Tomorrow’s Legacies: Gifts Celebrating the Next 125 Years
October 10, 2010 to January 9, 2011
Looking toward the future of its collection, this opening exhibition features 125 gifts that have been promised to the Crocker in celebration of its expansion and 125th anniversary. Given by donors throughout California and across the United States, the works include sculpture, painting, works on paper, ceramics, and photography spanning the history of material culture worldwide. All of these works will one day become part of the Crocker’s permanent collection. Among the works in the exhibition are:

• Viola Frey, Standing Man, 2000. Stoneware, 101 x 33 x 22 in. Promised gift of Mort and Marcy Friedman
• Amedeo Modigliani, Nude, n.d. Blue and red crayon on beige wove paper, 10 3/8 x 13 1/8 in. Promised gift of the Elkus Family in memory of Ben Britton Elkus
• Robert Mapplethorpe, Tulips in a Box, 1983. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 in. Promised gift of Jon Stevenson and John Silici
• John Twachtman, Artist’s Home, Greenwich, Connecticut, ca. 1890. Oil on canvas, 15 1/2 x 18 7/8 in. Promised gift of Dorothy and Norm Lien
• Theodore Butler, Train in Flood, 1910. Oil on canvas, 26 x 31 1/2 in. Promised gift of Anne and Malcolm McHenry

Teel Family Pavilion
The 125,000-square-foot Teel Family Pavilion, designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, will more than triple the size of the Crocker Art Museum, adding four times the space for traveling exhibitions and three times the space for the Museum to showcase its permanent collection. The new building will expand the Crocker Art Museum’s ability to originate and present traveling exhibitions and educational programs, exhibit significantly more of its growing collection, and enhance its role as a cultural resource for California and the state’s many visitors. The expansion was designed to establish a new architectural icon for the Museum and Sacramento, and to complement the Museum’s original Victorian Italianate Art Gallery building and engage with the surrounding cityscape

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