ART WALK: Western Washington University Sculpture Collection

Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings by Nancy Holt. Western Washington University sculpture collection, Bellingham, WA.

At Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, giant sculptures occupy the campus from one end to the other. It is one of the most notable university art collections in the country. It features works from the late 20^th century to the present, ranging from massive to delicate, functional to inspirational, industrial to organic, conceptual to humorous, complex to deceptively simple. A huge variety. They are constructed of stone, metal, wood, cement and other materials.

Mark di Suvero (b. 1933), For Handel (pictured), 1975. Painted steel; 27’ h. and Mindseye, 1978. Steel. For Handel was created specifically for the Performing Arts Plaza and dedicated to the 18th Century composer George Frederic Handel. 

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In mid-July I visited the Western Washington University campus with my family, taking a self-guided tour of the art following a map and brochure we had downloaded from the art department website. Most of the sculptures are outdoors, although a few are inside buildings. The tour also included the art galleries in the Performing Arts Center--on one side an exhibit of a series of Alexander Calder tapestries and on the other, of paintings by Northwest artists. (Through the art gallery windows to the west is a magnificent view of the Bellingham harbor.)

A series of 13 tapestries by the sculptor Alexander Calder are presented near the left entrance to the Concert Hall of the Performing Arts Center.

We parked at the east end of the campus and then worked our way west, more or less in numerical order. By the time we stopped at each of the 31 pieces described in the brochure, it took us about two hours. It was a cool, overcast day, not unusual weather for Bellingham, which made it comfortable for walking and perfect for photography.

Beverly Pepper (1924-2020), Normanno Column, 1979-80. Cast iron; 102” h. x 11 1/4” w. x 11 1/4” d. Normanno Wedge, 1980. Cast iron.

Here are a selection of pieces that we saw. Most of the pieces in the collection are larger than life. I made a point of including people (usually my brother Tom) in many of my photos to provide a sense of scale. 

Robert Morris (1931-2018), Untitled (Steam Work for Bellingham), 1971; installed 1974. Rock with variable volume of steam. (Robert Morris was my sculpture teacher when I was in art school.)

Do Ho Suh (b. 1962), Cause and Effect, 2012. Cast resin and stainless steel. Hundreds of tiny figures, connected feet to shoulder, make up this hanging sculpture. 

Bruce Nauman (b. 1941), Stadium Piece, 1998-99. Concrete. 

Tom Otterness (b. 1952), Feats of Strength, 1999. Bronze. One of seven charming figures, each approx. 15” high

Lloyd Hamrol (b. 1937), Log Ramps, 1974. Reconstructed 1983 & 1995; Cedar.

Richard Serra (b. 1939), Wright’s Triangle, 1979-80. Corten steel

Alice Aycock (b. 1946), The Islands of the Rose Apple Tree Surrounded by the Oceans of the World for You, Oh My Darling, 1987. Water-filled cast concrete.

Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), Skyviewing Sculpture, 1969. Painted iron plates.

Detail. Alexander Calder tapestry, 1974-75. Dyed and braided maguey fiber panel. Manufactured in Nicaragua.

David Ireland (b. 1930), Bigger Big Chair, 2004-07. Painted steel plates

Anthony Caro (1924-2013), India, 1976. Steel, rusted and varnished;

James FitzGerald (1910-1973). Rain Forest, 1959; installed 1960. Bronze fountain;

I thank my sister-in-law, Karen Neely, for leading us on this excellent tour. If you want to find out more about any of the pieces in the tour, download the Western Sculpture Garden brochure.

A TREASURE HOUSE OF "MODERN" ART: The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Among my favorite art museums in Washington, D.C. is the Phillips Collection, which I had the chance to visit last week. It had been five years since my previous visit, and I discovered that although many of the paintings on exhibit were familiar, there were new ones I hadn't seen before.

In 1921, Duncan Phillips, and his wife, Marjorie Acker Phillips, a painter, turned the family art collection into a public museum, the Phillips Memorial Gallery, in their home near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The collection soon expanded and the family moved across the street, turning over the entire house to art.

From the beginning, the collection focused on “modern” art, acquiring paintings by French Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir, and Cubists such as Picasso and Braque. Giving equal focus to American and European artists, Phillips juxtaposed works by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Maurice Prendergast, James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Albert Pinkham Ryder, with canvases by Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, and Danish painter Peter Ilsted.

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Auguste Renoir.

The painting that makes the museum famous and draws the most visitors is Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. It still has pride of place, filling one wall in a room on the second floor of the museum.

The Rothko Room.

As the collection expanded over the years it became necessary to add a new wing to the museum. Every room is filled with remarkable art. One small room is devoted to four paintings by Mark Rothko, each intense canvas taking up most of each wall. Standing in the middle one feels bathed in color on every side.

Migration series by Jacob Lawrence. Top: "Families arrived at the station very early. They did not wish to miss their travel north." Bottom: "The migration spread."

Another room contains the paintings of the Jacob Lawrence Immigration Series, depicting the migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North.  As one circles the room, it is like reading a book. Jacob Lawrence wrote text to go with each painting, and in the gallery it is placed underneath the paintings. In the excellent gift shop on the first floor, you can buy a book in which all the paintings and text have been assembled as a story.

Detail, Three Lawyers by Honore Daumier.

In another room, one wall features a painting and drawings by the French artist Honore Daumier, a master at capturing facial expressions and body language, a skill he used to critique social norms of the 19th Century. Not much has changed in the 170 years since Daumier painted the Three Lawyers. The three men, aught in conversation, feel contemporary. 

The Road Menders by Vincent Van Gogh.

Detail of The Road Menders.

As I made my way through the museum, I became intrigued by the titles of paintings, finding that my first impression of what the painting was about wasn’t always reflected in the title. For instance, in Vincent Van Gogh’s painting Road Menders, I had to look hard to find the tiny figures in the center of the painting making repairs on the road.

The Blue Armchair by Guy Pene du Bois.

In another painting, The Blue Armchair by Guy Pene du Bois, the chair all but swallows the figure sitting in it, making the title fit perfectly.

Part of the Where We Meet exhibit. L-R: Black Girl by Elizabeth Catlett; Breeze Rustling Through Fall Flowers by Alma W. Thomas; Girl in a Turban by William H. Johnson.

On the second floor of the museum is a room devoted to an exhibit called Where We Meet, in which pieces from the Phillips Collection and the Howard University Museum of Art are shown together “in conversation”. This exhibit is new since my last visit. 

These are just a small sample of the art on display at the Phillips Collection. To see my posts about my visit in 2019, go to:

The Phillips Collection, Part 1: America's First Museum of Modern Art. 

and

The Phillips Collection, Part II: What Do You Hang Over the Fireplace?

And to learn about the Family Gallery at the museum, a guide to looking at art with children, go to my recent post at my Art and Books blog.

PRESIDENTS, SPORTS HEROES and Much Much More at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

Abraham Lincoln, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

My visit to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, was on February 12^th, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, so, of course, my first stop was in the gallery of American Presidents. Lincoln is depicted life size, standing in his office at the White House. The guide at the Visitors' Desk in the lobby told me that when Mary Todd Lincoln first saw the painting she thought he looked so real that he was still alive.

The National Portrait Gallery shares a building with the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). (See my post of June 10, 2024.) Each of the four floors of the museum has galleries for both museums. During my visit I zigzagged between them before returning to the courtyard on the first level.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Sandra Day O'Conner, Ruth Bader Ginsberg 

A visit to the Portrait Gallery is a walk through American history, beginning on the first floor with portraits from 1600 to 1900. In the American Presidents gallery on the second floor George Washington greets visitors at the entrance, looking very much the Father of our Country.

American Presidents Gallery. George Washington at entrance.

Paintings of other Presidents vary considerably in size and style—each President choosing his own portraitist. Some of the paintings are in a traditional portrait style...

Bill Clinton, painting by Chuck Close

...while others, like those of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, are depicted larger than life and in a more contemporary style.

John Kennedy, painting by Elaine de Kooning

Barack Obama, painting by Kehinde Wiley

Adjacent to the President's Gallery is a gallery dedicated to The Struggle for Justice, beginning with a large painting of Congressman John Lewis. 

Congressman John Lewis, painting by Michael Shane Neal

Other figures in the gallery include singer Marian Anderson, activist and journalist Charlayne Hunter Gault, Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt Administration, and Minaru Yasui, civil rights attorney who fought for Japanese American rights during and after World War II. Each portrait is accompanied with a panel briefly citing the person’s role in history.

Michelle Obama, painting by Amy Sherald

I then climbed the elegant stairway to the third floor in search of Michelle Obama’s portrait in the gallery of Twentieth-Century Americans. The painting by Amy Sherald, of Michelle Obama in a flowing white dress, dominates the room.

I then climbed more stairs to reach the third-floor mezzanine where paintings of American sports heroes line the wall. 

Gallery of Champions, Arthur Ashe

There I found baseball players, football stars, tennis champions—men and women athletes whose names have become part of history. At the other end of the mezzanine are portraits of people from the entertainment world—actors, singers, dancers.

Third floor mezzanine.

The paintings on exhibit are just the tip of the iceberg, a selected few of the thousands of portraits in the Smithsonian collection. You can find more by searching the National Portrait Gallery's website. You may be surprised at what you will discover!

 

EXPERIENCE AMERICA at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Baseball at Night, by Morris Kantor 1934, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian American Art Museum(SAAM) shares a building with the National Portrait Gallery (to be discussed in another post). For museum goers, it’s a two-fer. And it’s free, just like other Smithsonian museums! As in many places elsewhere in Washington, this is a repurposed federal building, originally the national patent office. 

Third Floor Gallery

The four floors are packed with art, displayed in what were once offices and meeting rooms. On the third floor is a long gallery, in all its Victorian splendor, where patent applicants once displayed models of their inventions. Today, portraits of famous sports figures line the upper walls. 

Vaquero by Luis Jimenez. Modeled 1980, cast 1990.

Outside, at the G Street entrance, one is greeted by a large blue horse sculpture. Both entrances to the building lead from the street to a large covered atrium, where there are benches to sit, tables where you can sit and eat snacks from the Courtyard Café, and colorful displays of orchids from the Smithsonian plant collections. 

Orchids in the Atrium of the Museum.

I chose to start in the SAAM gallery at the west end of the first floor, which, is devoted to art from the years of the Great Depression, a time when artists enjoyed public support unlike any time before or since. The title of the exhibit: Experience America.

Entrance to the six rooms of Experience America. Valley Farms by Floss Dickinson, 1934, on left; Baseball at Night by Morris Kantor, 1934 on right.

“Many of the paintings in Experience America were created in 1934 for a pilot program designed to put artists to work; others were produced under the auspices of the WPA, which followed. The thousands of paintings, sculptures, and murals placed in schools, post offices, and other public buildings stand as a testimony to the resilience of Americans during one of the most difficult periods in our history.”

Scenes from American Life: Beach by Gertrude Goodrich, 1941-1947. Mural for Cafeteria of the old Social Security Building.

Although there are a few sculptures in the exhibit, most of the pieces are representational paintings revealing a picture of life in America at that time—from hometown baseball games and barber shop scenes, to farms, city life, and cotton pickers in the South. Here is a sample of paintings in the exhibit.

Ryder's House, by Edward Hopper, 1933.

Orilla Verde at the Rio Grande by Kay Walkingstick, 1935.

Skating in Central Park by Agnes Tait, 1934.

Grandma Moses Goes to the Big City (detail) by Grandma Moses 1946. She lived to be 101 and was 86 when she painted this..

 

In His Barbershop by Ilya Bululowsky 1934.

Sunlight and Shadow by Alan Rohan Crite, 1941.

The Experience America exhibit at SAAM is ongoing. The permanent exhibitions of SAAM feature American art from the time of the Early Republic to Modernism. I did a quick walk through the Folk and Self-Taught Art section, and the Modern and Contemporary Art on the third floor, but ran out of time and energy to see everything. I’ll have to go back to see the rest.

Suburban Post in Winter by William Gropper, 1936-37. Mural study for Freeport, New York, Post Office.