Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break

July 10, 2010 - October 17, 2010

ARTHUR VINING DAVIS FOUNDATION GALLERY,BOOTH FERRIS FOUNDATION GALLERY,COHEN GALLERY,DAVIS GALLERY,MIRKEN GALLERY,SHORE GALLERY,TURNER GALLERY,UPPER JETTÉ GALLERIES

In 2008, Los Angeles-based artist Sharon Lockhart spent the year in Maine visiting factories, farms, and industrial sites. One of these sites was the Bath Iron Works, where for a period of several months she observed and engaged with workers, forging collaborative relationships throughout the shipyard. The films and photographs produced from this experience focus on these workers during their midday break.

The exhibition includes the films Lunch Break and Exit, as well as three series of photographs. For the exhibition at the Colby Museum, Lockhart, in collaboration with the architects Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena, has selected a group of works by other artists and artisans that will be displayed in conjunction with works from the Lunch Break project. Additions to the exhibition are drawn from the Colby Museum's collection, other Maine museums, and private lenders. The dialogues that emerge from this evocative constellation of works offer viewers the opportunity to question conventional conceptions of art, craft, and work and their relationships to each other and everyday life.

Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break is organized by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Presentation of the exhibition at Colby College is co-organized by the Colby College Museum of Art and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Will Barnet: New York Drawings & Prints, the 1930s

July 10, 2010 - October 31, 2010

GOURLEY GALLERY

In 1930, at the age of nineteen, Will Barnet moved to New York City from his native Massachusetts to study at the Art Students League. The young artist responded to the city by exploring it on foot, preferring long walks to the stuffiness and darkness of his rented rooms. New York’s Central Park became Barnet’s refuge, a place where he slept on hot summer nights and where he quickly and discreetly drew the people he encountered. This exhibition presents a group of Barnet’s Central Park drawings from the 1930s as well as a selection of related prints made from the copper plates that he carried in his pockets and etched on site. Many of these works have remained in the artist’s possession and have never been exhibited. Created during the Depression, the drawings and prints describe a world of human intimacy and affection thoroughly removed from the époque’s harsh realities. In the verdant oasis of Central Park, which Barnet remembers as the people’s “front yard,” he captured figures in repose, embracing couples, mothers and children, and everyday people so deeply absorbed in conversation that they rarely noticed the artist in their midst.

Collecting Winslow Homer

June 26, 2010 - October 31, 2010

DE FERRARI GALLERY

Winslow Homer’s The Trapper, a painting from 1870, is one of the founding artworks of the Colby Museum’s collection. Its principal subject—man in harmony with nature—satisfied the desire among American collectors of the late 19th century for paintings that offered an alternative to the urban realities of industrialism. Drawn mostly from the Colby Museum’s permanent holdings, Collecting Winslow Homer presents this and other works by the artist in acknowledgement of the centenary of his death. Including examples from the full range of media in Homer’s oeuvre, the exhibition demonstrates the remarkable achievement of a largely self-taught artist who began his career as a popular illustrator and spent his last years on Maine’s Prouts Neck peninsula, creating visionary images of the American landscape. Of the 16 works in the exhibition, 11 are drawn from the Lunder Collection, which was promised to the Colby Museum in 2007.

Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art

Ongoing from June 1, 2010

LOWER JETTÉ GALLERIES,TEACHING GALLERY

On view this summer is a dynamic group of new acquisitions in a wide range of media, including paintings by Bob Thompson, David Salle, Helmut Federle, and Nicole Wittenberg, all gifts from the Alex Katz Foundation; print purchases by Julie Mehretu, Vija Celmins, and Lee Bontecou made possible by Lindsay Leard Coolidge ’78; sculptures by Louise Nevelson and Kiki Smith from the Lunder Collection; and a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois on loan from Barbara and Ted Alfond.

The Search for Beauty: Whistler and His Time

May 20, 2010 - January 9, 2011

THEATER GALLERY

A leading figure of the Aesthetic movement, James McNeill Whistler valued beauty and “art for art’s sake.” Primarily composed of works from the Lunder Collection, this exhibition considers Whistler in the context of other 19th-century artists who similarly embraced Aesthetic ideals.

Photographs from the Collection of Norma B. Marin

Ongoing from March 25, 2010

SOUTHEAST GALLERY

Organized in collaboration with Gary M. Green, Assistant Professor of Art, this exhibition will present black-and-white photographs by American modernists from the collection of Norma B. Marin. Featured artists include Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz, and Paul Strand, among others.

Alex Katz Collection

Ongoing

PAUL J. SCHUPF WING

The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Works of Alex Katz presents rotating selections from the Colby Museum’s comprehensive holdings of paintings, painted sculptures, and works on paper by this renowned American artist. On view are numerous examples of Katz’s iconic figurative works, including the monumental painting Pas de Deux from 1983, a gift from Paul J. Schupf in honor of Hugh J. Gourley III, director emeritus of the museum. Also featured are Katz’s expansive landscapes and cityscapes, paintings that capture qualities of light and aspects of the seasons with astounding economy and assuredness. Other highlights of the Katz Collection on view include the artist’s cut-out metal portraits and standing figures, painted front and back for a playful display of flatness in three dimensions.

John Marin Collection

Ongoing

OSHER GALLERY

The John Marin Collection at the Colby College Museum of Art displays a retrospective collection of paintings, watercolors, drawings, etchings, and photographs by this important American modernist. Twenty-four works spanning the artist’s career from 1888 to 1953 were given to the museum in 1973 by John Marin Jr. and Norma B. Marin. An additional work was given in 1992, and in 1998 Norma Marin made a promised gift of 29 etchings by Marin and seven vintage photographs of Marin, including a platinum print by Alfred Stieglitz. The complete collection of Marin works is presented on an ongoing basis in two dedicated galleries of the Lunder Wing.