It is no great revelation that, in the history of art, female artists have been consistently overlooked and underrepresented. That same history has also placed far greater esteem on paintings and sculptures — seemingly examples of "finished" or "final" works of art — than on works on paper.  Indeed, the arts of drawing and printmaking are commonly viewed as studies for something yet to be completed or, in the case of prints, as multipliable and thus not singular or original.  But rather than inferior, unfinished, or unoriginal, works on paper can be instructive and revelatory precisely because they offer an intimacy that other art forms do not, minimizing the distance between us and the artist, highlighting her careful hand and line-work, and offering immediate access to her process and experimentation. 

Whether sketches, etchings, or printed books, works on paper gain their value as showcases for their creators' expertise in what we call draftsmanship, the drawing skill-set that forms the root of all traditional two-dimensional art and a problematically gendered term in itself.  In this installation, we take the enormous talents of draftswomen — or, better, draftspersons — as our subject, bringing both women artists in our collection and their equally worthy works on paper to the fore. 

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839 – 1892) is widely regarded as the last great master of the ukiyo-e tradition in Japanese printmaking. He witnessed the great transition of Japan from the traditional Edo period to the westernization of the Meiji period, and the struggle between the two can be seen in his works. Much of his work served as reminders to the Japanese people of the importance of their historical and cultural heritage.

This series, Thirty-Two Aspects of Customs and Manners, was produced in 1888 and remains one of his most respected bodies of work. His unique ability to express genuine emotion in his portrayal of his subjects has been highly praised.

This Spring, Florida Southern College undergraduate students pursuing degrees in disciplines as wide-ranging as Chemistry, Molecular Biology, Business, Graphic Design, Studio Art, and Art History and Museum Studies enrolled in a brand-new course offering called “The Art of Curating.”

As part of their coursework, students had the opportunity to contribute collectively to an actual exhibition here at the Polk Museum of Art, their College museum (and academic home to the Department of Art History and Museum Studies).  This exhibit, aptly titled New Eyes on the Permanent Collection, features highlights from the Museum’s collection of nearly 3,000 works and offers visitors a novel set of lenses and voices through which to experience (or re-experience) familiar and lesser-seen treasures from our collection. 

Indeed, in this installation, we have asked these curators-in-training to give us new educational, art historical, and personal insight into a handful of objects, seen freshly through their individual 21st-century eyes, research, and writing. Once the students have completed their assignment, you’ll find not just one but three sets of interpretive labels per work. The concept:  as opposed to a singular curatorial voice, let’s create exhibition text that engages and encourages understanding of art from several curatorial vantage points at once. 

With this unique, student-driven exhibition, we look excitedly toward the future of museums and the diverse voices that will contribute to our understanding of art, culture, and museums’ vital roles in our world.  These student curators offer us an amazing preview.

Selected from the Museum’s permanent collection, Observations brings together an unusual collection of photographs that map the social landscape of the street. With each artist's careful cropping, decisive shots, and individual style, the photographs in this exhibition show that the everyday thrum of the streets is anything but banal; instead, these images exemplify how vibrant the city world can be, tracing the human lives and behaviors that make up the daily urban scene. In Observations, we gain the opportunity to take a step back in time and see the lives of those passersby we might otherwise overlook, now through a new photographic lens.

Have you ever wondered about what is going on in a painting? What that daydreaming figure is thinking about? What story the artist is trying to tell? In this original Polk Museum of art exhibition, visitors will be invited to use their own imaginations to look beyond the canvas, asked to envision the unwritten – and unpainted – stories in works of art with open-ended narratives. Featuring more than forty works from the Museum’s permanent collection, this show places each viewer into the essential role of narrator, providing creative answers to the questions the art itself poses but can never reveal.

This two-gallery, two-part installation highlights the important contributions and strides female artists made in the art worlds of the 1980s and 1990s. Selected from the Museum’s permanent collection and situated adjacently in Gallery II and the Perkins Gallery, these thematically related exhibitions present an instructive visual dialogue with one another, allowing viewers to engage with art not merely from two decades but also through an exclusively female lens.

This two-gallery, two-part installation highlights the important contributions and strides female artists made in the art worlds of the 1980s and 1990s. Selected from the Museum’s permanent collection and situated adjacently in Gallery II and the Perkins Gallery, these thematically related exhibitions present an instructive visual dialogue with one another, allowing viewers to engage with art not merely from two decades but also through an exclusively female lens.

Will Barnet (1911-2012) was an American original. While he may not be a household name today, his nine-decade influence as an artist, teacher, and exemplar of inimitable American modernism was profound. With more than 80 one-man exhibitions at major institutions like the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim and a body of work that, despite its stylistic variety, is always recognizably his own, Barnet achieved wide acclaim during his lifetime. In this installation of 22 recently gifted and loaned works by Barnet from the permanent collection, we can begin to see why.

Indeed, Barnet forged a unique path through 20th century art history. At once a dedicated realist and figurative artist when pure abstraction was the norm and an experimenter in abstraction when other artists renewed their interest in representation, Barnet defied expectations about how modern artists should produce art, refusing to bend to the whims of any contemporary trends.