" Subject Matters " at UI Museum Of Art

Thursday, 09 March 2006 12:07

Iowa City, IA- The University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) will present "Subject Matters: The Alan and Ann January Collection of American Prints and Drawings," an exhibition of 85 artworks that illustrate the collision of nature and modern urban life in landscape, still life and portraiture, March 11-June 4. A catalog with a preface by Alan January and an essay by Kathleen Edwards, the UIMA's curator of European and American Art, accompanies the exhibition. Edwards will host a gallery talk discussing the exhibition at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 23, at the UIMA. Engineering feats of wonder, the artist's studio and the street, female vitality, the symbolic world of nature and the transformation of printmaking technologies are just some of the novel topics represented in the exhibition. Artists include many of the most celebrated artists of the first decades of the 20th century, among them George Wesley Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Isabel Bishop, Charles E. Burchfield, William Glackens, Rockwell Kent, Reginald Marsh, Joseph Pennell, John Sloan and Grant Wood. The Alan and Ann January Collection is a promised gift to the UIMA. "The collection presents a fascinating web of influences, connections and relationships" Edwards said. "Viewers of this exhibition will encounter revelations of how artists looked at modern life, in depictions enhanced with allegory and romance, anecdote and humor, experience and inspiration." Edwards added that these artists felt strongly about the importance of the subject in art. She noted that artist Robert Henri, whose work is included in the exhibition, said "An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it." The January's interest in art arose from their exposure to art in Iowa. Alan was raised in Iowa City and Ann was exposed to Grant Wood through the Cedar Rapids Public Schools. They have collected for more than 20 years and have tried to find representational prints, drawings and watercolors created by American artists between the years 1900-1950. Visit :http://www.uiowa.edu/artsiowa

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