The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale is Showing "William Glackens and The Eight"

Written by Enrique Molina Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:48

Fort Lauderdale, FL - As the repository of the William Glackens estate, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale has among its holdings a large collection of paintings and works on paper by this intriguing turn-of-the-century American artist. Along with fellow painters Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, Arthur B. Davies, John Sloan and George Luks, Glackens sought to change the face of American art in the first decade of the twentieth century. Those eight artists wanted to paint life the way it was being lived, and in their pursuit of that goal they brought a grittiness to American art that had, until then, been dominated by the society portraits of John Singer Sargent and the picturesque coastal scenes of Winslow Homer.

This installation, which remains on view through Setpember 4th, includes paintings from the Museum’s permanent holdings as well as works borrowed from other South Florida collections.

William James Glackens studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later moved to New York City, where he co-founded what came to be called the Ashcan School art movement. This group of artists, dubbed by the press "the Eight Independent Painters" or The Eight, chose to exhibit their works without pre-approval by the juries of the existing art establishment. He became known for his dark-hued paintings of street scenes and daily life in the city's neighborhoods. His later work was brighter in tone, and showed the influence of Renoir. During much of his career as a painter, Glackens also worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in Philadelphia and New York City.

The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, founded in 1958, is housed in a building designed by noted American architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and completed in 1986. In 2003, the Museum inaugurated its Studio School, offering courses in painting, drawing, design, and other disciplines taught by professional artists; classrooms are located in the Studio School Annex located in the historic Travel Guard building along the scenic New River in downtown Fort Lauderdale. An active performing arts program, including Inside Out as its resident theater company, is scheduled in the Museum’s 256-seat Horvitz Auditorium. The Museum has now become well known for its exhibitions, which have ranged from Diana: A Celebration to Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, and for the highly regarded Artist in Residence Program, which broadens the sphere of conversation about contemporary art.


The Museum of Art has become one of South Florida’s leading cultural attractions; since 2003, it has broken all South Florida museum records by hosting more than one million visitors. The Museum’s collection of more than six thousand works is international in scope, while strongly reflecting the creative expression of the cultures of South Florida and the Caribbean. The collection includes significant works by the American artist William Glackens, by the artists of the northern European CoBrA movement, and by contemporary Cuban artists. It is the mission of the Museum to explore the broadest spectrum of visual culture at the highest level of quality. The Museum's two floors have a total of more than 21,000 square feet of space (not including the Glackens Wing) available for exhibitions. The Norma and William Horvitz Auditorium, with a seating capacity of 256, is a versatile facility that can be used for lectures, concerts, plays, films, and other activities, and the Miriam and Bernard Peck Sculpture Terrace on the second floor offers roughly 2,800 square feet of space for sculpture installations. The auditorium, sculpture terrace, and other Museum facilities can be rented for private functions. Visit the museum's website at ... http://moaflnsu.org

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