Ross Palmer Beecher: Americana
June 4 – July 31, 2011
Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery
Ross Palmer Beecher is a Seattle mixed media artist who creates quilts, flags, portraits of famous film directors and American folk heroes, and other types of objects from aluminum cans and found objects. Organized by Director John Olbrantz, the exhibition will feature a range of works from the past 25 years drawn from public and private collections throughout the region.
View an interview with Ross Palmer Beecher for the Washington State Arts Commission's American Master series
Lord and Schryver: Shaping our Cultural Landscape
June 22 – September 18, 2011
Study Gallery
Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver were two prominent Salem landscape architects who designed dozens of gardens throughout the Pacific Northwest, including numerous private gardens, parks, and schools in Salem. Organized by Professor Sharon Rose and historic preservationist and artist Bonnie Hull, the exhibition will feature drawings, watercolors, photographs and related ephemera drawn from public and private collections throughout the United States.
Timeless Renaissance: Italian Drawings from the Alessandro Maggiori Collection
August 13 – November 6, 2011
Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery
Timeless Renaissance: Italian Drawings from the Alessandro Maggiori Collection features 75 drawings from the 16th and early 19th centuries that were only recently rediscovered and have never been exhibited before outside of Italy. Organized by Professor Ricardo De Mambro Santos, the exhibition offers a fascinating glimpse of Count Maggiori as an art collector as well as the cultural and historical importance of his collection during the Napoleonic occupation of Italy.
Georges Rouault, And Veronica, with her soft linen, still walks the road..., 1922 (printed 1927)
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre
October 1 – December 23, 2011
From Oct. 1 to Dec. 22, 2011, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art will present Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre, in the Study Gallery and Print Study Center. Organized by Professor Ann Nicgorski, the exhibition features a range of prints from the series drawn from public collections throughout the region.
Georges Rouault (French, 1871–1958) was a Fauve and Expressionist painter and printmaker who often focused on Christian themes throughout his career. His Miserere et Guerre was a series of prints inspired by the violence of World War I and his compassion for the marginalized and underprivileged.
As a special feature Soo Yun Kang, professor of art history at Chicago State University, will deliver an illustrated lecture entitled Rouault’s Miserere: A Meditation on Suffering and Hope on Thursday, Oct. 27 beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Roger Hull Lecture Hall. Kang holds a PhD degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara and has written extensively about Rouault. Admission to her lecture is complimentary.
Norman Lundin: Inside/Outside
November 19, 2011 – January 22, 2012
Norman Lundin is a highly regarded Seattle painter and professor emeritus from the University of Washington who creates exquisitely rendered paintings and drawings of still lifes and landscapes. An exhibition of Lundin’s work opens on Nov. 19, 2011 and continues through Jan. 22, 2012, in the Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery. Organized by Director John Olbrantz, the exhibition includes approximately 30 works from public and private collections throughout the region.
Born in Los Angeles, Calif. in 1938 and raised in Chicago, Ill., Norman Lundin received his BA degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961 and his MFA degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1963. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study the work of Edvard Munch in Norway in 1963 and accepted a full time teaching position at the University of Washington in 1964, where he taught until his retirement in 2004.
For the past 40 years, Norman Lundin has focused on still life and landscape. He is particularly interested in light and how it defines and gives character to interior and exterior spaces, whether they are quiet still lifes of paint cans and empty rooms or simple landscapes of country roads and frozen lakes. He intends his work to be seen as a theatrical stage and for light to articulate the void. As the artist has commented, “The less you have, the more important what is there becomes.”
Norman Lundin will discuss his life and career in an illustrated lecture on Friday, Nov. 18 at 5 p.m. in the Roger Hull Lecture Hall; a preview reception will follow from 6–8 p.m. in the lobby and Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery downstairs. Admission to his lecture is complimentary.
The Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts Biennial
January 14 – March 11, 2012
The Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts Biennial features contemporary prints created by Native American artists at the Crow’s Shadow’s Shadow Institute on the Umatilla Reservation in northeastern Oregon. Co-organized by Professor Rebecca Dobkins and Master Printer Frank Janzen, the biennial exhibition includes prints created over the past two years.
Marie Watt: Lodge
February 4 – April 1, 2012
Marie Watt is a nationally recognized Portland mixed media artist whose work explores human stories and ritual implicit in everyday objects. Organized by Willamette anthropology professor Rebecca Dobkins, the exhibition will feature a range of work from the past decade, including portrait blankets of Jim Thorpe, Ira Hays, Susan B. Anthony and Joseph Beuys. Work also includes stacked blanket sculptures and “Engine,” a felt cave-like structure that honors the act of storytelling and the storytellers in the artist's life.
Antelope Mask, Burkina Faso, 20th century
West African Sculpture: Selections from the Mary Johnston Collection
March 24 – June 3, 2012
West African Sculpture: Selections from the Mary Johnston Collection will feature masks, sculptures, and other objects found among the various tribes of West Africa, including the Bambara and Dogon of Mali, the Bobo of Burkina Faso, the Senufo of the Ivory Coast, and the Ashanti of Ghana, among others. Organized by Director John Olbrantz, the exhibition is drawn from the splendid collection of Mary Johnston of Florence, Oregon.
top: "Wustenquell" (detail), 2012; bottom: "Pondokke II (detail), 2012
Andries Fourie: Reading the Terrain
April 14 – May 13, 2012
Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery, Hallie Ford Museum of Art
In Reading the Terrain, Andries Fourie, sculptor and assistant professor of art at Willamette University, explores the relationship between landscape and culture in the African country of Namibia.
Senior Art Majors
April 14 – May 13, 2012
Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery
Each spring, the museum features the work of senior art majors at Willamette University. The exhibition represents the culmination of their studies and includes work in a variety of media, from painting, drawing, printmaking and photography to sculpture, ceramics, installation and mixed media.
Artist featured this year are Amanda Applebaum, Bonnie Balogh, Stephanie Crook, Emily Doughten, Janelle Higashida, Sam Kuniholm, Nick Lawson, Sarah McCarthy, Maya McFaddin, Matthew Parker, Laurel Priest, Katherine Preucil, and Matthew Soma.