Unfiltered: Self Taught Artists from the Permanent Collection

March 7 – May 13, 2009

Perkins Gallery

Outside of the world of academic art training, ordinary people pick up brush or clay and create artistic objects. Sometimes these things have personal meanings and sometimes they are meant to simply be decorative. Although the skill level varies, these pieces are admired and collected by individual and museums alike.

Three years after its first popular exhibition of work by self-taught artists in its permanent collection, Polk Museum of Art presents an exhibition of more than 30 works. Most of these works have been acquired since the 2006 exhibition and many come from Florida’s large contingent of talented artists, including Jack Beverland, Tony Garan, Alyne Harris, Mary Proctor, Mary Jo Snell, and Ruby C. Williams.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Art and Design: Balance

December 13, 2008 – April 5, 2009

Ledger and Murray Galleries

This exhibition, focusing on Balance, is the second in a series of works from the Permanent Collection that presents examples of how artists think about design principles.

Most of us understand the basic compositional tools that are used to create artworks. Referred to most often as the Elements of Art, these include line, shape, value, texture, color and space as means to manipulating the materials artists use to make a work of art come to life.

But before the lines and colors can be created, artists consider the impact that design will have on communicating with viewers of their work. While the Elements of Art can be considered a form of language, the Principles of Design is the grammar that helps the artist create a work that makes sense to our eyes.

Balance is used by artists and designers to maintain an overall equilibrium in an artwork and to direct the viewer’s eye to multiple parts of a composition. And this can be achieved by symmetrical balance or asymmetrical balance, and by utilizing color, value, shape, and position, texture or direction.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Radcliffe Bailey: Between Two Worlds

November 15, 2008 – February 26, 2009

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Radcliffe Bailey (b. 1968) has quickly become recognized as one of the most important artists working in the Southeast. His work is the combination of personal reflection and innovation within a serious understanding of artistic traditions. Much of his work uses vintage sepia-tone photographs of African-Americans from his family’s collection. Using these images as the centerpiece of his artworks, he constructs sophisticated collaged artworks around them that reflected in abstract ways the presence of history within our contemporary world.

The title of the exhibition, Between Two Worlds, refers to a number of different considerations: Past and Present. Paintings and Prints. Tradition and Innovation. Migration and Settlement. While the exhibition includes three of his most recently completed monumental paintings, artworks that displays Bailey’s current artistic direction, the exhibition also looks back at work produced by Bailey as his career was beginning to rise to national prominence in the mid-1990s. Included are works from a 1997 series entitled Until I Die, mixed media prints that reflect the deep influence of music on Bailey’s work. Those works and his more recent work also address the issue of migration that has served to form and develop this country.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Miroslav Antic: Family Album

November 15, 2008 – February 26, 2009

Emily S. Macey Gallery

Miroslav Antic has become well-known and respected for his stunning paintings that feature formal indoor or outdoor settings, depicted in astonishing detail. However, he covers these images with a sheer layer of paint that seems to veil the image from our view and adds a pattern on top, a pattern that sometimes appears as water droplets and sometimes as simple dots, that remind us that what we are looking at is just out of reach.

In Antic’s current body of work, Family Album, he works from family photographs in much the same way. The added personal content to these paintings, however, brings a new sense of dealing with the past. By taking one object that reflects his family and turning it into a second object, he is able to focus on the important meaning represented in the subject of the photograph, while grappling with the increased distance between him and the depicted scene.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

A Moment in Time: Works from the Permanent Collection

December 13, 2008- February 26, 2009

Perkins Gallery

As the world around us seems to continue to speed up, one of the advantages of art is that it gives us an opportunity to consider things on our time rather than as they rush by us. This exhibition of works from the Museum’s Permanent Collection provides many such opportunities. Included are paintings, prints, drawings and photographs, representations of scenes both real and imagined, that show how pausing the action for a moment affords us the best chance to consider all the possibilities around us.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Art & Design: Emphasis

August 23 – December 7, 2008

Ledger and Murray Galleries

This exhibition, focusing on Emphasis, is the first in a series of works from the Permanent Collection that presents examples of how artists think about design principles.

Most of us understand the basic compositional tools that are used to create artworks. Referred to most often as the Elements of Art, these include line, shape, value, texture, color and space as means to manipulating the materials artists use to make a work of art come to life.

But before the lines and colors can be created, artists consider the impact that design will have on communicating with viewers of their work. While the Elements of Art can be considered a form of language, the Principles of Design is the grammar that helps the artist create a work that makes sense to our eyes. Exhibitions to follow will include additional Principles of Design: Balance, Proportion, Rhythm and Unity.

Emphasis is used by artists and designers to clarify for viewers how important each visual element in a composition is. In a sense, Emphasis can be used to create a form of visual ranking system. This is accomplished in a number of different ways:

Contrast
In compositions that are dominated by dark colors, bright colors will stand out. The same is true in the reverse. Think of hunters or road crews wearing orange vests for safety. But contrast can also be created through different sizes of elements, through solid shapes against more detailed backgrounds, and through combinations of vertical and horizontal elements.

Isolation
If one element is clearly different from everything that surrounds it, that element will attract your eye. Think of the difference between trying to view a single cloud in a sky filled with clouds versus looking at the only cloud in the sky. Or a single, brightly colored umbrella set up on a sandy beach.

Placement
The placement of elements has a major impact on our ability to “read” an artwork. Our eyes usually are attracted to the central element of an artwork. But artists can utilize Contrast and Isolation to place important elements in unusual positions to give us a different perspective on what lies in the center of the artwork.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Wilder Life: Works from the Permanent Collection

September 6 – November 16, 2008

Perkins Gallery

Animals are popular subjects for artists. They are sometimes purely for their beauty, and sometimes as a symbol for something more profound. This exhibition will present works from our permanent collection that feature wild life.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Frederic Remington Makes Tracks…

September 13 – November 9, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

DOCENT LED TOURS
will be held every Saturday at 2:00pm for the run of the exhibition, except Saturday, September 20. Just meet in the Museum’s lobby. Free with exhibition admission.

Cowboys and Indians.

Those words bring up images of rough hewn men on horseback on the frontier, herding cattle or hunting buffalo. It was an adventurous way of life that has captured the American imagination since the mid 1800s.

Frederic Remington is the most famous of western artists. His images of bucking broncos and Native Americans on the hunt have become embedded in our collective psyches so deeply that we can not imagine the old frontier without imagining one of his illustrations.

Remington (1861 – 1909) found popularity in the mid 1880s as an illustrator for prominent magazines like The Century, Harper’s, and Collier’s. His illustrations were not drawn from photographs, but from his observations and impressions of the American West. However, he was known for his painstaking attention to the details of the images he produced. Rather than formal portraits or landscapes, Remington preferred to show his subjects in the middle of a gesture or in full-blown action.

This exhibition will feature prints and recast sculptures from the permanent collection of the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York, as well as two original paintings from the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. Frederic Remington Makes Tracks… is organized by the Frederic Remington Art Museum and toured by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services.

EXHIBITION SPONSORS:

Mosaic

Heacock Insurance

McKay Enterprises
Mr. & Mrs. Ralph W. Weeks

MEDIA SPONSORS:

Max 98.3
97 Country WPCV
Talk 1430 WLKF
WONN AM1230

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

2008 – 2009 Lakeland Sculpture Invitational

September 2008 – August 2009

A Joint Project of Polk Museum of Art and the City of Lakeland
Lemon Street Promenade, Downtown Lakeland

Selected artists:

• Carl Billingsley
• Charles Brouwer
• Hanna Jubran

Polk Museum of Art has been working with the City of Lakeland since 1999 to place sculpture on the Lemon Street Promenade. In the past, we’ve presented two one-person exhibitions, and seven years of the Floirda Outdoor Sculpture Competition. This year, due to budget concerns, the City of Lakeland decided to try something different. Supporters of recent sculpture projects raised enough private funding to support an invitational exhibition.

The Lakeland Sculpture Invitational, showcases four or five works by three artists, instead of the ten artists that were displayed as part of the Sculpture Competition. The sculptures are installed on the three blocks of the Lemon Street Promenade between South Florida and Massachussetts Avenues.

In the Summer of 2008, artists were asked to submit images of their work for consideration. A small panel of City and Museum staff then selected three artists and invited them to bring pieces for display. Each artist was given one block of the Promenade for his work. This year, Carl Billingsley has the block between South Florida and Tennessee, Hanna Jubran has the block between Tennessee and Kentucky, and Charles Brouwer has the block between Kentucky and Massachussetts.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Digital Art in the Post-Digital Age: Works from Florida Faculty

May 24 – September 7, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab, declared in 1998 that “the digital revolution is over.” By his account, for the last ten years we have been living and working in the Post-Digital Age. During this time the use of the computer in the design and construction of art has advanced remarkably.

As a way of sampling the various ways in which digital technologies are assisting artists, Polk Museum of Art created a juried competition open to all art instructors and professors at the colleges and universities throughout the state of Florida. This exhibition includes 66 works by 28 different professors representing 15 colleges and universities, ranging from Miami to Tallahassee and almost everywhere in between.

Just as we have come to rely in so many ways on computers to help us through both our work and private lives, this exhibition has revealed that computers are being used in manners both predictable and surprising. It is no surprise that the exhibition includes digital video and photography work. More surprising is that artists who are painters, printmakers and ceramicists are making use of computer software to assist them in their work. In addition, though the largest universities in the state are represented in the exhibition, professors at a number of smaller universities and community colleges are doing outstanding work.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Karsh, Leonard, and Bagert: A Photographic Legacy

May 24 – September 7, 2008

Emily S. Macey Gallery

Yousef Karsh, Herman Leonard and Jenny Bagert represent three “generations” of photographers. Karsh is recognized as one of the pioneers of 20th-century portrait photography. His portraits of luminaries such as Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway are iconic images. His protégé, Herman Leonard, has achieved international fame for his documentation of jazz musicians as well as numerous other projects. Leonard’s first internship after college was working with Karsh, learning Karsh’s ability to translate his subject’s character into print and commitment to perfect print quality. Leonard’s protégé, Jenny Bagert, also owes something to her early mentor, but she has achieved her own unique vision as well. This exhibition will show the way photographic traditions have been passed down from mentor to student.

EXHIBITION SPONSORED BY:

Peterson & Myers, P.A.

and Robert and Malena Puterbaugh

With Additional Support From:

Ron and Becky Johnson
Kerry and Buffy Wilson

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

All That Glitters is English Silver

June 7 – August 31, 2008

Perkins Gallery

Over the years, longtime Museum supporter Ned Perkins has donated an extraordinary body of English silver, most of it dating from the 18th century. With noted silversmiths including Hester Bateman, Henry Chawner and Henry Cowper in this collection, it represents some of the finest work produced during the Georgian era. More recently, the Museum’s collection of English silver was enhanced by a pair of large flagons donated by the estate of Joel B. Marks. This pair, created in the mid 17th century by William Mantle with embellishments added in the 19th century, will be displayed for the first time in this exhibition.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Volvo Mayfaire by-the-Lake Purchase Awards: 25 Years of Collecting

April 26- August 17, 2008

Ledger and Murray Galleries

For the last 25 years, Polk Museum of Art has purchased at least one piece of work from Mayfaire by-the-Lake (renamed Volvo Mayfaire by-the-Lake in 2005), its annual outdoor art festival. This exhibition will feature some of the highlights from the dozens of works that have been added to the permanent collection through these purchases.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Mark Messersmith: Natural Defenses

March 1 – June 1, 2008

Perkins Gallery

Mark Messersmith is a Florida artist known for his dark, almost disturbing paintings of the current state of the environment of the Sunshine State. His paintings are so full, so complex, so colorful, that only someone with immense talent could pull it all together to make each painting work. Beyond the paintings, though, is the fact that he also does his own wood carvings which frame the paintings at the top, and he creates detailed vignettes in little boxes that line the bottoms of the paintings. The boxes serve as a form of storyboard for the painting.

At first glance, his depictions of the Florida environment seem romantic, almost a kind of Eden: so much life, so much diversity, so much color. But Messersmith’s work is not the type of romanticism that exists in much of the landscape art that is still so popular throughout the state and in Polk County. Messersmith steps back just a little to that boundary that divides these protected areas from more developed areas. It is this area where the struggle is: the battle for habitat and survival both between humans and animals and between animals themselves. The more space that is allocated for human needs in the state, the less room and resources remain for those species that were here before us. Messersmith’s artworks address this issue in subtle ways.

Messersmith is one of the most acclaimed artists in the state. He is professor of art at Florida State University, where he has taught since 1985. He has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the State of Florida four times. He has also received two Ford Foundation Fellowships, two fellowships through the National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation award.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Florida Visual Artist Fellowship Exhibition

March 8 – May 18, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

Each year, over 200 talented artists from around the state apply to the Division of Cultural Affairs of the State of Florida for this competitive award, which is based entirely on the artistic merits of the submissions. From this pool, 24 artists, working in virtually every possible medium, style, and subject matter, have been selected for this exhibition. As part of the fellowships, participating artists loan work for a year-long exhibition that tours the state. This exhibition gives the public a chance to see what is, in effect, the state of the arts in Florida. Artists range from age 32 to 66. Mediums range from traditional materials like oil on canvas, porcelain, charcoal drawings and photography to the unusual such as eggshells, animated photographs, sewing patterns and fur. A catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition and is available in the Museum Store.

This exhibition was organized through a partnership between the Florida Art Museum Directors Association and the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Mr. & Mrs. R.H. Reitzel
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Style and Tradition: Ndebele, Thembu and Zulu Objects from the Permanent Collection

December 15, 2007 – April 20, 2008

Ledger and Murray Galleries

In 2004, William D. And Norma Canelas Roth donated over 50 beautiful African Artworks to Polk Museum of Art, the seeds of a new collection area for the Museum. The pieces to be displayed are from Southern African cultures and include large ceramic beer pots, intricately woven necklaces, and various ceremonial objects.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Robert Stackhouse: Swimmers and Floaters

December 1, 2007 – March 2, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

Robert Stackhouse is the most widely respected visual artist to have called Polk County home. He was born in Bronxville, New York in 1942, but moved to Polk County in 1954 to live with his grandparents. He lived at Lundy’s Fish Camp in Auburndale, graduating from Auburndale High School in 1960. Summers and evenings after school were spent on Lake Juliana, hunting and fishing, rowing his boat, watching for alligators, water moccasins and cottonmouth snakes. After receiving his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of South Florida in 1965—as part of the first graduating class of art students at the school—and his Master’s Degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1967, he began teaching at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in Washington DC.

Stackhouse quickly achieved a reputation as an important young sculptor and rose to national prominence after his one-man show at Max Hutchinson’s Sculpture Now Gallery, in New York in 1976. During his career, he has been honored with more than seventy one-person exhibitions. He has served as a visiting artist and professor of art at colleges, universities, and art schools across North America including the Cleveland Institute of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Art Gallery of Toronto. He has installed more than thirty permanent displays of his work in outdoor and indoor venues across the country and in Australia. His work has been collected by prestigious museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

This thirty-year retrospective, organized by Polk Museum of Art from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, traces the roots of some of his most widely known imagery—boats and snakes—to his formative years in Polk County. Stackhouse has become acclaimed for his sculptures, paintings and prints, examples of which are included in this exhibition. Swimmers and Floaters refers to the snakes and boats featured in much of his work, both of which embedded themselves in his consciousness during his teen years on Lake Juliana in Auburndale. The snakes and boats of his youth have taken on mythic importance and increased psychological power as Stackhouse has refined these images over the years. Among the more imposing works included in the exhibition are the 40’ long Great Rain Snake sculpture made of oak and Dragon Fight, a 16’-wide watercolor painting featuring an image of a Viking ship overlaying an enormous serpent.

Stackhouse’s work will also be featured in two other Bay area exhibitions in early 2008. Robert Stackhouse Editions Archive will be on display at The USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa January 11 – February 23, 2008. Waves of Meaning: Robert Stackhouse & Carol Mickett will be on display at The Arts Center in St. Petersburg January 18 – February 23, 2008.

SPONSORED BY:

ASC Geosciences, Inc.

with additional support from a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

Special thanks are extended to the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation for their support in this project.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Delineation: Lines that Define Artworks from the Permanent Collection

November 17, 2007 – February 24, 2008

Perkins Gallery

This exhibition shows the impact that lines can have within an artwork. Ranging from delicate masses of lines that create forms to bold strokes that guide our eyes, the lines used by artists can have a surprising effect on our perception. Artworks included in the exhibition range from etchings and linocuts to paintings and sculptures.

Without Representation

September 8 – December 9, 2007

Ledger and Murray Galleries

Many works of art have no recognizable forms within their compositions. This exhibition presents artworks from the permanent collection that explore the many possibilities open to artistic expression beyond representation. Artists represented in this exhibition include Richard Anuskiewicz, Steven McCallum, Robert Natkin, Tony Robbin, and Victor Vaserely.

Carlos Luna: Personal Histories

August 25 – November 25, 2007

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Carlos Luna’s paintings and works on paper exhibit the beauty, anger, sorrow, passion and hope shared by many people in Cuba. Specifically, what is apparent when viewing Luna’s paintings is his ability to tell beautiful and tragic tales through the body of his work. Luna is able to take his experiences and emotions and translate them into paintings that speak for many. His paintings, though symbolic in nature, are grounded in the real world, and thus carry with them a poignancy not often found in the art world. Beyond that is his exquisite handling of paint within a wide range of complex compositions. From portraits of roosters to swirling, dynamic murals, Luna’s work never fails to elicit dramatic responses.

Intense yet controlled, earthy yet abstract, intimate yet boldly theatrical, dark yet exuding the power of life, Luna’s paintings present the essences of love and hate, freedom and repression, growth and decay—that is to say, all that makes up the human condition.

Carlos Luna was born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba in 1969. He left Cuba in 1991 to live in Puebla, Mexico, where he resided until 2002. Since 2002 he has lived in the United States, currently living in Miami. His work has been exhibited in museums on five continents and is in important collections in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including El Museo del Barrio in New York, Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach and the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. In 2001 he received an award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the same year he received an EB-1-1 (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) Immigrant Visa from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. Polk Museum of Art has worked with the Susquehanna Art Museum and The Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery at Lebanon Valley College as well as the Cisneros Capital Group to organize this exhibition and produce a major catalogue on Luna’s work.

A catalogue of the exhibition is available in the Museum Store.