The Palmer Museum of Art Takes an Intimate Look at the Collection of James and Barbara Palmer
January 13, 2005
The Palmer Museum of Art will showcase An Intimate Eye: Selections from the Collection of James and Barbara Palmer beginning January 18.
This private collection, garnered over many years, boasts particular strengths in American painting and drawing from the mid-nineteenth through the late-twentieth centuries. From Frederic Edwin Church's Vermont Scenery (1852) to Georgia O'Keeffe's Lake George (1924), to Richard Estes' hyper-realistic Third Avenue (1998), the works explore the history of American art in all its richness and complexity.
Among the treasures of nineteenth-century art is Mary Cassatt's Lydia in a Loge, a drawing related to her many oil paintings and prints on the subject. This iconic image is just one of the many monuments of nineteenth-century art from the couple's collection. The exhibition also features paintings by several of America's most influential early twentieth-century modernists: Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin.
The exhibition will also include paintings by a number of mid- to late-twentieth-century artists. Key works from this group are Jacob Lawrence's famous homage to the civil rights movement, Confrontation at the Bridge, and Robert Gwathmey's Lullaby. Other selections include two stunning photorealist canvases by Chilean artist Claudio Bravo and a 1983 portrait of the Palmers by Jerome Witkin.
Not only did the Palmers collect many significant paintings, but they also obtained several contemporary ceramics that will be displayed as well. Denmark's most important artists in this medium are well represented, including vessels by Bodil and Richard Manz, Malene Müllertz, Gutte Erickson, Inger Thing, and Turkish-born Alev Siesbye. Also on view are several pieces by the master of twentieth-century American utilitarian ware, Warren MacKenzie.
An Intimate Eye: Selections from the Collection of James and Barbara Palmer will be on view at the Palmer Museum of Art from January 18 until May 15, 2005. The Palmer Museum of Art is located on Curtin Road near the University Creamery, and admission is free.
Contact: Robin Seymour,qzq1@psu.edu or 814.865.7672