Martin Art Gallery
Selected Past Exhibitions
Paul McEwan: Everyday Abstractions
July 9 - September 6
Reception: August 28, 4:30 - 6:00
Hours: daily 10 a.m. - 10 p.m.
Paul is the Associate Director of Film Studies for the College. His medium is digital color photography.
Facing East/Facing West: Asia without Boundaries
Guest Curators: Zoë Charlton and Amze Emmons
This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the 1908 Center for Ethics theme of globalization and features paintings, prints, mixed media and sculpture created by women artists currently working in the U.S. and Asia.
Wings of Fire: The Illuminated Books of William Blake
Illuminated books by William Blake (English, 1757 – 1827) painter, engraver, religious visionary, and poet are the focus of this exhibition curated by Dr. Grant Scott and his Senior Seminar students. Included are works from the College’s Florence Foerderer Tonner Print Collection and private collectors. Blake scholar Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will give a lecture in conjunction with this exhibition, Wednesday, March 19, 7:00 p.m. in Recital Hall, Baker Center for the Arts.
Senior Exhibition: Class of 1908
This annual exhibition features the work of senior art majors. Their work in painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and photography is the result of their year-long participation in the Senior Art Seminar.
Gerald Rowan: Houses of the Spirit
During a rich and productive career, Gerald Rowan has acquired both breadth and depth as an artist and arts educator. Beyond frequently exhibiting his work in solo and group shows, he has written numerous articles on ceramics for Ceramic Monthly, conducted glaze workshops throughout the region, and performed consulting for organizations as varied as Binney & Smith/Crayola in Easton, PA and the Small Business Administration in Kingston, Jamaica. He has also participated in a wide variety of artist-in-residence programs and been seated on many area arts advisory boards.
The body of Rowan’s current work—drawings, adobe vessels, and sculpture/spirit houses— is framed within the vocabulary of geometric abstraction. He chooses to avoid narrative content to instead explore and express in intuitive and reflective ways the internal, rather than the external, world. Beyond using the language of geometric abstraction, he is intensely concerned with the visual elements of space and color.
The Jews of Luthertown
This traveling exhibit of photos and artifacts from Jewish life in the city of Wittenberg, Germany in the 1930s and ‘40s is sponsored by the Institute for Jewish and Christian Understanding.
Lehigh Art Alliance 71st Annual Spring Juried Exhibition
The Lehigh Art Alliance was founded in 1935 by Professor Garth Howland of Lehigh University. For more than 70 years the Alliance's annual fall and spring juried exhibitions have given artists from the region an opportunity to exhibit their work in a professional manner.
1906 Senior Art Exhibition
This annual exhibition features the work of senior art majors. Their work in painting, drawing, sculpture, digital video, and photography is the result of their year-long participation in the Senior Art Seminar.
Robert Walch: Natural Mosaics
Walch shares his creative process—a progression of images that represent the evolution of a visual theme, from his initial inspiration to the present.
Joseph Pennell: Surveyor of American Wonders
Art history professor Dr. Jadviga da Costa Nunes has curated an exhibition that highlights etchings and lithographs made by Philadelphia native Joseph Pennell (1857 -1926).
Chris Wright: New Paintings
Based in New York City, Wright is one of contemporary art's highly respected still-life painters.
Jos. A. Smith: Innerscapes
Professor of Fine Art at Pratt Institute, Jos. A. Smith will exhibit his recent work which includes watercolors, drawings and paintings.
Max Mason's baseball oeuvre: a dynamic, accessible look at America’s pastime through the eyes of a fan and a painter. His compositions are beautifully considered and feature intense contrast between light and shadow with clear, resounding color.
Seymour Lipton Sculpture: Post War America in Three Dimensions curated by Lori Verderame in cooperation with the Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; University of Iowa Art Museum, Iowa City, IA and the Elrejem Museum, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.
The Founder of Sculpture as Environment: Herbert Ferber 1906-1991
curated by Lori Verderame in cooperation with the Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY.
Di Suvero and Serra: Sculpture curated by Lori Verderame and Patricia Canfield Phillips in cooperation with SUNY, New Paltz, NY.
España: Artists Celebrate Spain curated by Keli Rylance in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin, Stout, WI.
Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective curated by Richard Lorenz in cooperation with the Imogen Cunningham Trust, Berkeley, CA.
A Sea Change: New Paintings by Frank Lind curated by Lori Verderame.
Seasons of Symmetry: Jeanne C. Wilkinson curated by Mark Daniel Cohen.
Women Artists: Past & Present curated by Jennifer Olson Rudenko in cooperation with the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX, the Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA and the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
Women of the Land: Images of Native Americans by Edward S. Curtis curated by Lori Verderame and Jadviga da Costa Nunes in cooperation with the Atrium Gallery, Chubb Corporate Headquarters, Warren, NJ.
City Streets and Country Byways: The World of Walter E. Baum curated by Martha Saston in cooperation with the Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA.
The Rediscovery of Allan R. Freelon: African American Master curated by Lori Verderame.
Muhlenberg Masterpieces: Selections from the Permanent Collection curated by Lori Verderame and students in the Museum Studies program of Muhlenberg College.
Local Color I & II: Selections by Area Artists curated by Lori Verderame.
DePietro & DeLong: Art Narratives curated by Lori Verderame.
Place: Robin Hill, Sharon Horvath, Mary Hambleton curated by Sandra Erickson.
Dawn Kenzer Paintings curated by Lori Verderame.
Abstract Dilemmas: The American Abstract Artists curated by Lori Verderame.
Beatrice Riese: A Retrospective curated by Jeanne C. Wilkinson in cooperation with the Snite Museum, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.
James Carroll: New Work curated by Sandra Erickson.
Rembrandt Etchings curated by Troy Thomas in cooperation with Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA; Berman Museum, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA; Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA.
Ron Hand, Potter curated by Lori Verderame.
Lydia Panas: New Work curated by Lori Verderame.
Natural Affinities: New Work by Mark Wonsidler curated by Lori Verderame.
Barnes & Elliott: New Work curated by Ray Barnes and Joseph E. B. Elliott.
African Art: The Biography of a Private Collection curated by Lori Verderame in cooperation with Quinnipiac College, Handen, CT and Hicks Art Gallery at Bucks County College, Newtown, PA.
Margery Edwards Retrospective curated by Jeanne C. Wilkinson in cooperation with the Estate of the artist, New York, NY.
Albrecht Durer: The Life of the Virgin and Selected Master Prints curated by Leo Mazow with Lori Verderame in cooperation with Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA and the Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA.
Art History's Heroes: The Masters of Contemporary Realism curated by Lori Verderame.
Robert Forman: Thread Paintings curated by Joseph E. B. Elliot and Lori Verderame.
A Passion for Collecting: Selections from the Rothfeld Gift of Contemporary Art curated by Lori Verderame in cooperation with the office of Alumni Relations.
Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Design Exhibition in cooperation with the department of Theatre and Dance.
Displacement: Contemporary Photographs by Edward Burtynsky and Camilo Jose Vergara curated by Joseph E. B. Elliott in cooperation with the Center for Ethics.
Creative Collecting: General Trexler's Vision for the Arts curated by lori Verderame in celebration of the 150th anniversary of General Harry C. Trexler and the Trexler Trust.
The Birds of Armenia
For the Birds of Armenia exhibition, the Martin will host sixty beautiful and original paintings of various birds which were featured in the book of the same name published by Muhlenberg College Professor of Ornithology, Dr. Dan Klem. The paintings are currently on deposit at the Martin. This exhibition relates to the college's biology curriculum.
Scott Sherk & Kevin Tuttle: Drawings, Figure Studies, & Recent Work
On view are Sherk and Tuttle's working drawings and clay studies which have led them to produce vastly divergent work. The exhibition gives the viewer an opportunity to see the artistic journey-- the decision making aspect, an integral part of the creative process. Both artists begin their work with careful observations of the visual world and then respond to it, interpret it, and record in very personal ways. Those initial searches give way to powerful and unexpected conclusions.
The Creative Genius of Mark Klee: The Allentown Zoo & Other Myths
Through sight and sound, the exhibition honors the inventiveness, intelligence, and multi-faceted talent of Mark Klee— a man who gave much and left too soon. For nearly two decades he was best known as Mr. Mark, a beloved and integral part of Muhlenberg’s radio station WMUH FM91.7 and the edgier side of the Lehigh Valley arts scene. His intriguing body of work includes spoken word, illustration and design, theater, and music performance. Mark’s hand-written radio scripts, recordings of his programs for WMUH, and visual art made in a variety of media are all highlighted in the Martin Art Gallery.
healing: a personal journey
Artist/educator Carolyn Manosevitz shares with viewers her intimate and personal post-holocaust odyssey. As a child of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, her 2- and 3-dimensional works are inspired by themes of memory and reconciliation. She works in a modest scale using a variety of media, often creating layers with papers and fabrics. Carolyn has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Canada, teaches art at Colorado Mountain College, and has lectured at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, the Iliff School of Theology in Denver and Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. The exhibition, in the Galleria area of the Baker Center for the Arts, is presented in collaboration with the College’s Institute for Jewish and Christian Understanding.
Four Freedoms
In conjunction with the Center for Ethics fall programs, guest curator R.L. Tillman explores President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s four freedoms as he expressed them in his 1941 address to Congress—freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. During World War II, these abstract ideals were illustrated by Norman Rockwell and became cultural icons of that era. Now more than 60 years after Rockwell, Tillman offers another look at these values through the work of nearly a dozen 21st-century artists.
Larry Fink: Somewhere There’s Music
Larry Fink shares with viewers his personal photographic overview of American musicians. During the past 50 years, he’s captured compelling images of musicians—jazz, street, famous and not-so-famous—using electronic flash and high contrast printing, a well-trained eye, and honed instincts. The results are pictures rich in social context and texture that reflect the quintessential photographic moment, fleeting and personal, but undeniably public.
Amze Emmons: Recent Work
Emmons, assistant professor of printmaking at Muhlenberg, combines traditional printmaking and perspective drawing with flat, colorful painting to depict modern spaces in thoughtful and unexpected ways. He points out that we live in a world of increasing flux and migration with “more than 30 million people currently displaced by strife alone”.
Emmons researches the “media-scape” daily for images and phrases that may lead to deeper narratives and combines them with inspiration from a variety of additional sources including old signs, architectural illustrations, graffiti, information graphics, and news footage. He then uses time-honored studio techniques to make images with a sense of minimal realism that go one step further and evocatively record the global transience and dislocation of our time.
The PA Diversity Network (PDN) Photo Project
100 Same-sex Couples: Facing Inequality
PDN coordinator and photographer, Liz Bradbury, began the project in February 1906. Since then Bradbury, who holds both undergraduate and graduate fine arts degrees, has taken more than 100 photos of local same-sex couples to illustrate to the greater Lehigh Valley community that many committed long-term, same-sex couples are living here. She states, " … viewers have recognized people they know and learned how these friends, neighbors, and colleagues have to endure the lack of civil rights that the rest of the population takes for granted." The exhibition is held in collaboration with the College’s Gay Straight Alliance.
Emergent Behavior
Guest curated by Amze Emmons, this group exhibition focuses on installation and three-dimensional art being made outside the boundaries of traditional production methods and media. All eight women—Tova Carlin, Diane Carr, Cece Cole, Leslier Mutchler, Tracey Snelling, Christine Buckton Tillman, Regan Wheat and Wendy White—are making art in various locations throughout the country. They are, however, unified in using commonly found materials and infusing their work with a sense of mystery and unexpectedness that is thoughtful and often playful.
Senior Exhibition: Class of 1907
This annual exhibition showcases the work of senior art majors. Their work in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and mixed media is the result of their year-long participation in the Senior Art Seminar.
Heft, Fletcher, Haas: Recent Work
Drawings by Carol Heft and Leslie J. Fletcher, and silver gelatin prints by David Haas give viewers an opportunity to explore provocative similarities as well as obvious differences in the artists' use of media, color, composition, and subject. All three artists teach studio classes at Muhlenberg College and other colleges and universities in the area.
The Pathos of Ecstasy
Guest curator Ara Osterweil, Assistant Professor of Muhlenberg College's Art & Film Studies, brings together a quartet of New York artists, painters-Noah, Landfield, Lydia Mullin, and Elizabeth Leggett- and sculptor David Baumflek. Working independently, they each use formal issues such as media, color, scale, and composition, to create art that expresses the ineffable emotions of pathos and ecstasy.
Word, Mind, City: The Universal Resonance
This exhibition features uniquely layered compositions by artist and Lafayette College faculty member Ed Kerns and painter/architect Elizabeth Chapman. They use topography, urbanism, and linguistic symbols as visual metaphors to study and explore the realm of neuroscience in exciting and unexpected ways.
For more details visit: www.lafayette.edu/~kernse
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