Salem, MA - Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination  is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in more than 26 years. Featuring 180 works, the Peabody Essex Museum venue is the largest of this touring exhibition which includes the artist’s finest box constructions, collages, dossiers, films and graphic designs from public and private collections––more than 30 on public view for the first time. Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, chief curator of the Peabody Essex Museum, and a widely published scholar on Cornell, is curator of the exhibition. Co-organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Navigating the Imagination presents new insights into Cornell’s career, illuminating the richness of the ideas he explored across all media.  On Exhibition April 28, 2007 to Aug. 19, 2007.

The exhibition is organized thematically to suggest for the first time Cornell’s interpretation of the imagination as a metaphorical “echo chamber” or “mirror of the mind.” Unlike previous chronological presentations, the exhibition mingles Cornell’s series and media across four decades of his career to convey the conceptual and formal cohesiveness of his body of work. This approach emphasizes Cornell’s perception of art as a means of creating and communicating connections and possibilities through repetition and variation. The exhibition also is the first time that his films and a greater range of his collages are being shown in the ompany of the box constructions for which he is best known. Joseph Cornell’s work often is associated with Surrealism. However, as Hartigan reveals, this self-taught, yet amazingly sophisticated artist went beyond ascribed art categories by mingling the techniques of painting, collaging, drawing, and woodworking and blurring the distinctions between the fine and popular arts.  

 

About the Peabody Essex Museum
The recently transformed Peabody Essex Museum presents art and culture from New England and around the world. The museum's collections are among the finest of their kind, showcasing an unrivaled spectrum of American art and architecture (including four National Historic Landmark buildings) and outstanding Asian, Asian Export, Native American, African, Oceanic, Maritime, and Photography collections. In addition to its vast collections, the museum offers a vibrant schedule of changing exhibitions and a hands-on education center. The museum campus features numerous parks, period gardens, and 24 historic properties, including Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year old house that is the only example of Chinese domestic architecture on display in the United States. Visit our Web site at www.pem.org