Behind the Scenes, New England’s Museums Burnish Their Collections

Jacob Lawrence’s print series The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture is now part of the collection at Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, ME. Based on 41 tempera paintings Lawrence completed in 1938 which the artist translated onto silkscreen a half-century later, an intact series such as Colby’s is rare, since many prints in this series were sold individually. Lawrence’s modernist work, known for graphic color and dynamic use of pictorial space, was heralded throughout his career, beginning with the Migration Series (1941). The current gift enhances understanding of Lawrence’s other works on paper in Colby’s collection, Builders #1 and Often Three Families Share One Toilet. L’Ouverture led Haitians in the struggle for independence from French rule, and remains an important symbol for racial justice, making this acquisition especially timely, according to museum director Jacqueline Terrassa.

A dramatic outdoor public art installation, Wide Babelki Bowl, by Ursula von Rydingsvard, is new on view at the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, NH. The large-scale cedar vessel, with its sensuous textures, modestly reflects traditional handiwork. “Babelki are the popcorn stitches that get knit onto sweaters,” the artist explains while alluding to the surrounding landscape’s geologic formations. Other outdoor sculptures at the Hood include Beverly Pepper’s Thel, whose pyramidal shape flows into a grassy berm, and Mark di Suvero’s monumental X-Delta, industrial steel I-beams framing the view of surrounding trees.

Founded in 1947 by folk art collector Electra Havemeyer Webb, Vermont’s Shelburne Museum is known for connecting visual arts with material culture. The museum comprises 39 buildings spread over a 45-acre campus. Outdoors, visitors encounter a steamboat of the kind that traveled down the Mississippi River. Indoors, the Webb Gallery offers a different exploration, featuring landscape painters such as Andrew Wyeth, Grandma Moses and Winslow Homer.

New to the collection is a history painting by Alfred Jacob Miller, Departure of the Caravan at Sunrise, documenting the American West as it was in the mid-1880s. Miller traveled by horseback with trappers and explorers through present day Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming, creating detailed sketches he later turned into paintings. Departure of the Caravan at Sunrise portrays Native American families and trappers exchanging goods under a cloudless rose-toned sky, caravan pointed toward the Western frontier.

In Massachusetts, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), and the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, in Waltham, added exciting pieces to their collections. At PAAM, upcoming exhibits will feature a still life by Gerrit Hondius and a vibrant, expressionist tableau by Joe Diggs. Hondius depicts well-loved string instruments, a lute resting on a table, a chestnut colored cello in the foreground, in a modern style yet reflecting the painter’s Dutch lineage. About Pickled Hamhock Jammin’ @ Joes, Diggs writes, “My latest works reflect a more romantic aspect as an African-American man in his 50s pursuing his dreams.”

The Rose announced a gift of 86 works of art, by established and emerging artists, in honor of the museum’s 60th anniversary. These include Jim Dine’s diptych Harry Mathews Skis the Vercour, an expressionist canvas in purples and blues, with collaged paint brushes that allude to the history of artist self-portraits. Other noteworthy pieces include Jenny Holzer’s red granite bench from her Survival series, a large Warhol drawing, works on paper by Tracey Moffatt and Nam June Paik, and an assemblage by Betye Saar.

The Rhode Island School of Design Museum (RISD) takes the “design” in its mission to heart: objects in the collection range from a minimalist painting by Agnes Martin to the pop of a red Olivetti typewriter. A recent cache of contemporary artworks joins gifts made by the same collectors “that have become a constant presence in our galleries,” according to Dominic Molon, curator of contemporary art. Molon singles out work by Fia Backström, known for multi-disciplinary artworks, and conceptual artist Gardar Eide Einarsson. RISD welcomes the recently gifted additions as “providing a unique overview of an artistic moment defined by multidisciplinary explorations of gender identity, and an innovative and dynamic approach to material and form.”

Connecticut’s art museums have also been busy, enlarging collections to build upon strengths. Recent acquisitions at Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art span the decades, from Early American New England samplers, to Sean Scully’s Landline Blue Sea, a seven-foot painting with bands of colors, to photographs which challenge norms of gender representation by Catherine Opie and Mickalene Thomas. Thomas’ monumental image can be read as a feminist challenge to Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) in New Haven, known for mid-20th century modern art, was recently gifted work by, among others, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. A Surrealist work by Rothko from the 1920s, and his No. 11 (Yellow, Green, and Black) from the 1950s, whose saturated bands of rectangular color appear to float, will be on view later this year, along with Kline’s Portrait of Nijinsky. “The gifts align with our mission to present the creative work of artists in multifaceted ways, whether by collecting art from different stages of their career or representing the varied media they used,” according to YUAG director Stephanie Wiles.

The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) announces the acquisition of a photograph by An-My Lê (Yale MFA 1993), whose probing images are widely exhibited. The photograph, Fragment II, Restoration of J.M.W. Turner’s ‘Port Ruysdael’, is based on a maritime scene by Turner in the YCBA collection, and was taken during Lê’s visit to Yale’s conservation studio. “Impressive in its scale and ability to capture the painterliness of its subject, this photograph is the first work by a Yale School of Art alumna to enter the collection,” said director Courtney J. Martin.

The Fairfield University Art Museum joins New Haven’s two museums in being open to a general public while serving as a resource for academic programs. A substantial gift of paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints and sketchbooks by modernist Stephen Pace has been added to Fairfield’s collection, the largest gift in the museum’s 10-year history. Born in Missouri in 1918 to a farming family, his travels led to paintings as varied as the landscapes of Europe and the deserts of Mexico. Studies with renowned abstract expressionist artist and teacher Hans Hofmann, in New York City and Provincetown, had a lasting influence on Pace’s mature style.

With museums springing back to life during this season of renewal, art lovers eager to know more about recent acquisitions while also connecting with familiar favorites can at last experience a renaissance of the spirit.