Friday, December 19, 2008

Coming Attractions

The museum may be closed for renovation and expansion, but the staff here are incredibly busy sending out loan letters and making arrangements for the traveling exhibitions we are organizing for after we reopen in 2010.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, 1859-1863, oil on canvas mounted on masonite, gift of Cornelius N. Bliss, Addison Gallery of American ArtOpening at the Addison on September 7, 2010 is Whistler's Bridge: The Battersea Bridge in the Art of James McNeill Whistler. The show will focus on the subject of Old Battersea Bridge (see right) as Whistler interpreted it in a series of paintings, prints, and drawings. The show will include approximately sixty-five objects, including paintings, prints, several drawings and watercolors, and photographs. The show will then travel to our co-organizer, the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, opening there on January 11, 2011.

One week later, Sheila Hicks: 50 Years will open. The show marks the first museum retrospective devoted to this artist. Hicks is a pioneering figure noted for objects and public commissions whose structures are built of color and fiber. The plans for the show include installation pieces gracing the Addison's galleries and main stairwell. It will travel to several venues, including the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania where it will open in the winter of 2011.

David Smith, Structure of Arches, 1939, steel with zinc and copper plating, purchased as the gift of Mr. and Mrs. R. Crosby Kemper (PA 1945), Addison Gallery of American Art, ©2006 The Estate of David Smith, licensed by VAGA, New York, NYAfter opening at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas on October 30, 2010, Maverick Modernists: John Graham, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Their Circle will open at the Addison on April 29, 2011. This show will focus on the formative years of some of America’s most inventive and important painters and sculptors of the 20th century, including David Smith (see left), who dramatically transformed conceptions of what a painting or sculpture could be. The show will then travel to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art opening there in the fall of 2011.

Stay tuned to http://www.addisongallery.org/ and right here to Blog Addison for updates on these new shows and our plans for the coming years!


James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives

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