William Bailey Featured at Wichita Art Museum (WAM)

Written by Cody Vanderslice Tuesday, 25 January 2011 22:16

WICHITA, KS - The Wichita Art Museum is pleased to announce that the exhibition William Bailey on Paper will be on view February 3 through May 13, 2007.  Organized by the Betty Cuningham Gallery, this exhibition features 20 prints, 8 tempera paintings on paper and 32 drawings that represent what Bailey is most known for, still-life paintings and singular figure paintings.

“William Bailey is one of the most outstanding contemporary artists working in the representational tradition,” explains Stephen Gleissner, Chief Curator at the Wichita Art Museum.  “Bailey's work, indeed, is imbued with tradition, for his precise technique and highly ordered compositions convey a sense of timelessness and perfection.”

Five large canvases will figure prominently among the Bailey works presented, in which he continues to work with his distinctive muted color palette and characteristically familiar objects.  Bailey does not use photographs or direct observation in his compositions.  The objects represented are drawn from the interior, continually shaped and reshaped by the artist’s imagination.  The Wichita Art Museum includes one of Bailey’s oils and one of his prints, both of which will be on display during the exhibition.

A past resident of Wichita and graduate of the University of Kansas, William Bailey is Professor of Art Emeritus at Yale University and counts among his many accolades election to the National Academy of Design, membership in The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and serving as a trustee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation from 1970 to the present.  Bailey has an extensive exhibition history, and his works appear in numerous public and private collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; among many others.