Future Retro: Drawings from the Great Age of American Automobiles

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Design Proposal: Two Door Sports Car, Elia Russinoff, 1953, Colored pencil on black paper, From the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

September 20 – December 6, 2014

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery and Gallery II

This exhibition, comprised of 105 drawings from the collection of Frederick A. Sharf, showcases the beauty and ingenuity of American automotive design during the decades following World War II, a landmark period in car styling. An eclectic mix of illustrations, from preliminary sketches to fully rendered works, provides a rare glimpse into the creative process at some of America’s premier car companies. Dating from an era when speed and power were increasingly important factors in automotive sales, these drawings show reference to the emerging technologies that influenced postwar car design, like airplanes and rockets.

Remembering Florsheim

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July 26 – October 12, 2014

Richard Florsheim, Paris (aka La Seine a Paris, 1963, Color lithograph, Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 2004.8.14, Gift of the Richard Florsheim Art Fund

Perkins Gallery

Richard Florsheim (1916-1979) was a prominent American printmaker, painter, sculptor, educator and writer. He graduated from the University of Chicago before studying art at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He completed his formal art training in Paris at the Musee Nationale d’Art Moderne. Florsheim first gained international recognition in the late 1930s after exhibiting his work at such major institutions as the Salon des Refuses in Paris, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art. He was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists and the prestigious National Academy of Design. In 2004, the Richard Florsheim Art Fund donated 60 original works by Florsheim to the Permanent Collection at Polk Museum of Art. This exhibition will include a majority of those works and will be the first time in a decade that these works have been on public display.

Collected Color

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June 21 – September 13, 2014

Gallery II

Color is an important part of our world. It allows us to visually recognize, relate, and interact with our surroundings. Because of its enormous impact on how we interpret what we see, color has always been an important attribute of art. But, color is not important for art only because it affects what we see; it also affects how we reproduce what we see so that others may share our creative experiences. It was not until the late 19th century that artists began separating color from naturalism, using it in more expressive ways to emphasize emotion or creative formalism. How has the use of color in art changed? Is color still an important creative component? This exhibition examines how color is represented within the Permanent Collection at Polk Museum of Art.

Damien Hirst, Psalm Print, Domine, in Virtue tua, 2010, Screenprint with diamond dust, Purchased through the Art Resource Trust, Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 2013.6.1

Terra Incognita: Photographs of America’s Third Coast

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June 21-September 13, 2014

Richard Sexton, Ascension, Quadtone pigment print

On loan from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, La., this exhibition is a photographic project of 15 years’ duration (1991-2006) by nationally recognized photographer and author Richard Sexton. Latin for “unknown land,” Terra Incognita consists of 57 black-and-white photographs of marsh, scrub lands, dunes, beaches, swamps and forests along the Gulf Coast from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle. According to R.C. Baker of the Village Voice, “Nothing in these extremely fine-grained prints remotely resembles a ‘snapshot.’ … Sexton’s spare compositions coalesce into a portrait of nature as the ultimate abstractionist.”

Ekphrasis

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Kenny Scharf, Space Travel, 2002, Line-etching and aquatint with spit-bite aquatint, PMoA Permanent Collection 2002.21.4, Gift of Norma Canelas and William D. Roth

May 3 – August 2, 2014

Murray & Ledger Galleries

Ekphrasis is a rhetorical exercise first practiced by the ancient Greeks. Essentially, it is a method of creating a new artwork as directly related to or inspired by an already existing work of art. Ekphrasis often takes the form of prose or poetry. The written piece is not necessarily a mere description of the artwork at hand (although it can be), but is a beautifully written account about the subject of the artwork. It is as if an illustration precedes and inspires the written story. For this exhibition, Polk Museum of Art worked with students at the Lakeland Montessori Middle School. Artworks from the Museum’s Permanent Collection were chosen and assigned to students as inspiration for their own explorations into the ancient art of ekphrasis.

All Decked Out!

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April 26, 2014 – July 20, 2014

Perkins Gallery

As part of Innoskate 2014, the exhibition All Decked Out! will celebrate the artistic and innovative spirit of skateboarding. Polk Museum of Art is proud to host an exhibition of contemporary artworks that smack of the edgy aesthetic so often associated with skating. Co-organized by Chad and Suzie Cardoza, two Tampa-based artists and independent curators of all things skate, this exhibition includes a diverse checklist of works by artists from around the country. Painted skate decks, skateboard photography, skate-related sketches, and assembled sculptures will coalesce to provide audiences a renewed glimpse into the unique and creative state of contemporary skateboard culture.

Site Specifics: Dan Gunderson & Barbara Sorensen

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March 22-June 7, 2014

Barbara Sorensen

This exhibition will include installations by two Central Florida artists, Dan Gunderson of Deland and Barbara Sorensen of Winter Park. Working collaboratively, these two artists will transform the Museum with their site-specific installations that will provide visitors an opportunity to experience art environments. Gunderson has been a professor of art at Stetson University for more than 35 years. Having spent 30 years almost exclusively in ceramics, his current works visually express his observation of pop culture. Via the medium of iconic movie characters, his work reflects that we are a composite of our experiences. Sorensen is known for monumental sculptural installations that draw on geological formations and classical elements, but she recently turned her energies to large-scale environmental vessels constructed of metals and resins as well as new, experimental mixed-media prints and two-dimensional works. She discovered clay as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. After completing her degree there, she went on to work with mentors Gunderson, Peter Voulkos, Don Reitz and others who were pushing the medium in fresh, sculptural directions.

For more information on Sorensen and her work, please visit http://www.barbarasorensen.com/. For information on Gunderson and his work, please visit www.DanGundersonArt.com.

Dan Gunderson

What’s In a Gesture?

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March 1 – April 19, 2014

Perkins Gallery

A painter’s gestural brushwork can be important to convey emotional intensity. To some viewers, a wild lashing stroke of paint may seem like an unkempt act by an untalented artist. Yet actually, such gestural strokes are usually intentional; despite their appearances, these marks are important to the artist’s emotional intent.

The paintings in this exhibition emphasize gesture. Although they are characterized by a similar technique of animated brushwork, their inherent meanings are widely varied.

Stephen Knapp: New Light

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December 14-March 8

This exhibition will include 14 “lightpaintings” by Massachusetts artist Stephen Knapp. Knapp’s lightpaintings are created by using cut, shaped and polished pieces of specially coated glass, installed perpendicular to the wall’s surface, to reflect beams of colored light into abstract compositions. These unique works deepen the traditional relationship between the painter and light. They also expand the concept of light sculpture and light art, and they continue the traditions of kinetic art, op art and abstract painting. His sculptural canvases appear to be painted but are all created with light and glass. Lightpaintings are the intersection of painting, sculpture and technology by exploring color, light and space. Knapp has more than 30 years of experience creating installation art and exploring the possibilities of light. His work can be found in museum, public, corporate and private collections.

Home

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December 7, 2013 – April 27, 2014

Murray & Ledger Galleries

Home is more than a building of concrete and timber. It is that place where we feel most comfortable and secure. It’s the place we all long to leave, only to wish we could go back. And, more personally, it’s the container of our most cherished treasures and beloved memories. It’s where we feel most confident and less hustled to be something we are not. It’s a sense of belonging. It’s a much needed opportunity to let down our guards. It’s a chance to be open, critical, and uncontested with ourselves. Home is more than a place. It’s a state of mind.

Home can be a powerful subject for artists. As a repository for so many of our intrapersonal traits and a physical reminder of our identities, the idea of home can represent freedom, sentimentality, rawness, and honesty in an artist’s work.

In this exhibition, we select artworks from the Museum’s Permanent Collection that relate to this important sense of home.

Inventing Narratives

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November 16, 2013 – February 20, 2014

Perkins Gallery

Storytelling has always been an important part of the human legacy. Through stories handed down from one generation to the next, cultures have been defined, traditions have been established, and histories have been embellished. These stories have often been subjects for many works of art over time. Although paintings or illustrations may pertain to a specific story, it is difficult for us to refrain from applying our own creative interpretations to the story, which may over time become completely transformative to the original story.

Works of art are often open to our unique interpretations, which may or may not relate to an artwork’s intended meaning. Although the stories we create about a work of art may be different from the artist’s original intent, it does not necessary mean we are incorrect in our interpretations. It is only human nature to apply narratives to artworks that we may not understand completely.

This act of creating stories out of unfamiliarity is actually another form of art; although we may not fully understand a work of art, we still rely on our inherent creative abilities to construct some sort of relative narrative.

This exhibition is intended to spark those creative abilities within the viewer. The sole intent here is not to simply explain a work of art to the viewer, but rather to keep the meaning of a work of art hidden from the viewer so that they may create their own narratives.

Paintings of the Space Age

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October 12-December 7

Although the National Air and Space Museum is known internationally for its impressive collection of objects and crafts pertaining to America’s history in aviation and space exploration, it is less known for having a collection of artworks. With help from the Smithsonian’s Affiliations Program, the Polk Museum of Art will exhibit a sampling of artworks produced in the 1960s after James Webb, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, suggested that artists be enlisted to document the historic effort to send the first human beings to the moon. Working together, James Dean, a young artist employed by the NASA Public Affairs office, and Dr. H. Lester Cooke, curator of paintings at the National Gallery of Art, created a program that dispatched artists to NASA facilities with an invitation to paint whatever interested them. The result was an extraordinary collection of works of art.

reGeneration2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today

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October 12-December 7

Following the success of the 2005 book and exhibition, which traveled to 10 different cities across North America, Europe and Asia, this second edition, reGeneration2, turns the spotlight on new, up-and-coming talents from 31 countries. Curators at the world-renowned Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, selected the most promising candidates from some 700 entries submitted by 120 of the world’s top photography schools. The resulting publication and exhibition reveal the flexibility of young photographers as they pass fluidly from one genre to another and/or one technique to another. This exhibition will include 105 photographs by some of the world’s most promising young talents.

This exhibition is produced by the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation, New York, with the support of Pro Helvetia.

Yousuf Karsh Portraits

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Yousuf Karsh, General John Pershing, ca. 1945, silver gelatin print, Gift of the Estate of David P. Hauseman

October 12 – December 7, 2013
Hollis Gallery

Susan Cox of Lakeland found the portraits of Winston Churchill and Gen. John Pershing tucked in the bottom dresser drawer in her late father’s home. She recognized the work of photographer Yousuf Karsh, and then found correspondence between Karsh and her father, David P. Hauseman. After consulting with a friend and an art dealer, she found out just how valuable her discovery was.

Cox and her siblings — Debbie Viertel of Lakeland; Carolyn Eng of Orlando; and David Hauseman of Birmingham, Ala.; and Jeanette Merkel of Thousand Oaks, Calif. — donated both photographs, as well as the correspondence authenticating them, to Polk Museum of Art.

The photographs that Cox found were original silver gelatin prints bearing Karsh’s signature. Cox had forgotten that her father had prints by Karsh (1908-2002), an Armenian-Canadian artist who is widely considered one of the most accomplished portrait photographers of all time. Hauseman, while a cadet at West Point, had worked as Karsh’s assistant for a time. In 1945, he helped at the Pershing shoot and, as noted in a Readers’ Digest story on the photo, Hauseman was saluted by Pershing afterward. Apparently Hauseman wrote Karsh and asked for a copy of the photograph, which Karsh sent, along with the Churchill.

Yousuf Karsh, Winston Churchill, 1941, silver gelatin print, Gift of the Estate of David P. Hauseman

Karsh’s iconic photograph of Churchill, titled “The Roaring Lion,” was shot December 30, 1941, immediately after Churchill addressed the Canadian Parliament. Churchill, in a foul mood, stormed into an anteroom and told Karsh he had two minutes to take the photo, Karsh wrote in his book, “Faces of Our Time.” He recalled that he yanked Churchill’s cigar from his mouth, leaving the prime minister scowling, “regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy.” The photo, which some say is the most reproduced image in history, graced the cover of Life magazine when World War II ended, and it will appear on the Bank of England’s 5-pound note to be issued in 2016.

Both photographs were developed and signed by Karsh himself. They were found still in the original sleeve from Karsh’s studio.

Jackson Walker’s “They Called it La Florida”

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October 8-24, 2013

Polk Museum of Art is proud to participate in the statewide celebration of Florida’s 500th anniversary. Beginning October 8, a painting by noted Florida history artist Jackson Walker will be exhibited at Polk Museum of Art. They Called it La Florida is Walker’s rendition of Ponce de Leon’s first landing in Florida on April 2, 1513. The painting will remain on display to the public until it travels to Florida Southern College for Walker’s participation in the college’s Florida Lecture Series on October 24. Preceding his appearance at FSC, Walker will meet with students at Polk Museum of Art to discuss his works as they relate to Florida’s history.

For more than a year, Walker researched, sketched and painted this detailed 3- by 5-foot oil-on-canvas work commemorating Juan Ponce de Leon’s discovery of the coast of Florida. The explorer had convinced the King of Spain he would find the island of Bimini north and west of the islands already discovered in the Caribbean. The expedition left Puerto Rico and on April 2 sighted a shoreline. A landing party of heavily armored men (and dogs) boarded boats and headed for shore. They claimed the seemingly uninhabited land for Spain and named it “La Florida,” not only for the Catholic observance of the “Feast of Flowers” but for the beautiful landscape they saw from shore.

Polk Museum of Art is honored to participate in this celebration of Florida’s initial founding. We acknowledge and thank Dr. Sarah McKay, the Florida House on Capitol Hill and the Juan Ponce de Leon Society for allowing us to be a part of this important commemoration.

Have Lens Will Travel: Photographs by Tom Mack

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September 14-November 23, 2013

Lakeland photographer Tom Mack is constantly on the go and never leaves his camera behind. But he is much more than a travel photographer: His photographs are like accompanying illustrations to his life’s story. Mack is passionate about his work and thus is highly prolific as a photographer; clicking the shutter on his camera is as automatic as breathing. His productivity does not allow him to adhere to one photographic style or subject. After culling through literally thousands of photos, these few were chosen to represent Mack’s adventures both geographically and photographically. As a regular at the MIDFLORIDA Mayfaire-by-the-Lake festival, the community has grown fondly familiar with Mack’s photography.

Tibor Pataky: Into Abstraction

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July 27 – October 5, 2013

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Tibor Pataky was an obscure but notable Hungarian-American artist who lived and worked in central Florida during the middle of the 20th century. In 1936, he became the instructor of life drawing at Florida Southern College. During this time, he found inspiration from Milton Avery and other artists who were affiliated with The Research Studio in Maitland, Florida. As this influence grew, Pataky aspired to leave Florida and pursue additional instruction from leading artists. This led him to Provincetown, Massachusetts where he studied under the tutelage of Hans Hofmann in 1952. Pataky spent six summers as Hofmann’s student, which had a profound effect on his later work. This exhibition will be a collaboration between Polk Museum of Art and Florida Southern College. It will consist of works by Pataky from the collection at Florida Southern College, which includes eight paintings and some 400 drawings.

Culture Builds Florida

We gratefully acknowledge contributors to the Annual Exhibition Fund:
Dorothy Chao Jenkins
The Reitzel Foundation
The Linda & Alan Rich Fund
Lynda and Steve Buck

Polk County Collects

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July 27 – October 5, 2013

Gallery II

Polk County is truly a bastion of culture. Not only do we have great organizations like Bok Tower Gardens, the Polk County Historical Museum, and Polk Museum of Art; and impressive centers of culture and education like Florida Southern College and Polk State College, but there are many private collectors throughout our county who collect beautiful and important works of art. This exhibition showcases only some of those private collections to give our audiences a glimpse into what some fellow Polk County residents have collected over the years.

Culture Builds Florida

We gratefully acknowledge contributors to the Annual Exhibition Fund:
Dorothy Chao Jenkins
The Reitzel Foundation
The Linda & Alan Rich Fund
Lynda and Steve Buck

A Silver Lining

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June 29 – November 9, 2013

Perkins Gallery

This exhibition will showcase PMoA’s collection of Georgian silver, which refers to the period of the consecutive reigns of four English kings: King George I (1714-1727; King George II, son of George I (1727-1760); King George III, grandson of George II (1760-1820); and King George IV, son of George III (1820-1830). This time does not necessarily characterize a specific style in English silver as it does a time period when English silver became immensely popular. The styles of silverware varied throughout the Georgian Period, with the simplest forms produced through the reigns of George I and George II. Midway through the reign of George III, and lasting through the duration of George IV’s reign, silverwares styles became much more ornate by comparison. Most of these pieces were produced during the reign of King George III. The simpler pieces were produced during the early stages of the king’s reign and the more ornate pieces, during the latter years of his reign. When England entered into war with the American colonies during the late 18th century, styles in silver became to be far less ornate than the periods before and after. Around the turn of the 19th century, the style of English silverware was the most ornate of any other period.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Master of Ukiyo-e

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June 15, 2013 – September 8, 2013

Ledger and Murray Galleries

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.

The series displayed in this exhibition, 32 Aspects of Women, 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. In these prints, Yoshitoshi chooses to highlight tradition over modernization by continuing to use the then-outdated ukiyo-e woodblock process instead of the modern mass reproduction techniques that were embraced by the younger generation of artists. In addition, most of the prints in this series feature women who display traditional Japanese values; only nine of the 32 images feature women of the Meiji period and only one of his subjects dons western apparel.