All That Glitters is English Silver

June 7 – August 31, 2008

Perkins Gallery

Over the years, longtime Museum supporter Ned Perkins has donated an extraordinary body of English silver, most of it dating from the 18th century. With noted silversmiths including Hester Bateman, Henry Chawner and Henry Cowper in this collection, it represents some of the finest work produced during the Georgian era. More recently, the Museum’s collection of English silver was enhanced by a pair of large flagons donated by the estate of Joel B. Marks. This pair, created in the mid 17th century by William Mantle with embellishments added in the 19th century, will be displayed for the first time in this exhibition.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Volvo Mayfaire by-the-Lake Purchase Awards: 25 Years of Collecting

April 26- August 17, 2008

Ledger and Murray Galleries

For the last 25 years, Polk Museum of Art has purchased at least one piece of work from Mayfaire by-the-Lake (renamed Volvo Mayfaire by-the-Lake in 2005), its annual outdoor art festival. This exhibition will feature some of the highlights from the dozens of works that have been added to the permanent collection through these purchases.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Mark Messersmith: Natural Defenses

March 1 – June 1, 2008

Perkins Gallery

Mark Messersmith is a Florida artist known for his dark, almost disturbing paintings of the current state of the environment of the Sunshine State. His paintings are so full, so complex, so colorful, that only someone with immense talent could pull it all together to make each painting work. Beyond the paintings, though, is the fact that he also does his own wood carvings which frame the paintings at the top, and he creates detailed vignettes in little boxes that line the bottoms of the paintings. The boxes serve as a form of storyboard for the painting.

At first glance, his depictions of the Florida environment seem romantic, almost a kind of Eden: so much life, so much diversity, so much color. But Messersmith’s work is not the type of romanticism that exists in much of the landscape art that is still so popular throughout the state and in Polk County. Messersmith steps back just a little to that boundary that divides these protected areas from more developed areas. It is this area where the struggle is: the battle for habitat and survival both between humans and animals and between animals themselves. The more space that is allocated for human needs in the state, the less room and resources remain for those species that were here before us. Messersmith’s artworks address this issue in subtle ways.

Messersmith is one of the most acclaimed artists in the state. He is professor of art at Florida State University, where he has taught since 1985. He has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the State of Florida four times. He has also received two Ford Foundation Fellowships, two fellowships through the National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation award.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Florida Visual Artist Fellowship Exhibition

March 8 – May 18, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

Each year, over 200 talented artists from around the state apply to the Division of Cultural Affairs of the State of Florida for this competitive award, which is based entirely on the artistic merits of the submissions. From this pool, 24 artists, working in virtually every possible medium, style, and subject matter, have been selected for this exhibition. As part of the fellowships, participating artists loan work for a year-long exhibition that tours the state. This exhibition gives the public a chance to see what is, in effect, the state of the arts in Florida. Artists range from age 32 to 66. Mediums range from traditional materials like oil on canvas, porcelain, charcoal drawings and photography to the unusual such as eggshells, animated photographs, sewing patterns and fur. A catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition and is available in the Museum Store.

This exhibition was organized through a partnership between the Florida Art Museum Directors Association and the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Mr. & Mrs. R.H. Reitzel
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Style and Tradition: Ndebele, Thembu and Zulu Objects from the Permanent Collection

December 15, 2007 – April 20, 2008

Ledger and Murray Galleries

In 2004, William D. And Norma Canelas Roth donated over 50 beautiful African Artworks to Polk Museum of Art, the seeds of a new collection area for the Museum. The pieces to be displayed are from Southern African cultures and include large ceramic beer pots, intricately woven necklaces, and various ceremonial objects.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Robert Stackhouse: Swimmers and Floaters

December 1, 2007 – March 2, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

Robert Stackhouse is the most widely respected visual artist to have called Polk County home. He was born in Bronxville, New York in 1942, but moved to Polk County in 1954 to live with his grandparents. He lived at Lundy’s Fish Camp in Auburndale, graduating from Auburndale High School in 1960. Summers and evenings after school were spent on Lake Juliana, hunting and fishing, rowing his boat, watching for alligators, water moccasins and cottonmouth snakes. After receiving his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of South Florida in 1965—as part of the first graduating class of art students at the school—and his Master’s Degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1967, he began teaching at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in Washington DC.

Stackhouse quickly achieved a reputation as an important young sculptor and rose to national prominence after his one-man show at Max Hutchinson’s Sculpture Now Gallery, in New York in 1976. During his career, he has been honored with more than seventy one-person exhibitions. He has served as a visiting artist and professor of art at colleges, universities, and art schools across North America including the Cleveland Institute of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Art Gallery of Toronto. He has installed more than thirty permanent displays of his work in outdoor and indoor venues across the country and in Australia. His work has been collected by prestigious museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

This thirty-year retrospective, organized by Polk Museum of Art from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, traces the roots of some of his most widely known imagery—boats and snakes—to his formative years in Polk County. Stackhouse has become acclaimed for his sculptures, paintings and prints, examples of which are included in this exhibition. Swimmers and Floaters refers to the snakes and boats featured in much of his work, both of which embedded themselves in his consciousness during his teen years on Lake Juliana in Auburndale. The snakes and boats of his youth have taken on mythic importance and increased psychological power as Stackhouse has refined these images over the years. Among the more imposing works included in the exhibition are the 40’ long Great Rain Snake sculpture made of oak and Dragon Fight, a 16’-wide watercolor painting featuring an image of a Viking ship overlaying an enormous serpent.

Stackhouse’s work will also be featured in two other Bay area exhibitions in early 2008. Robert Stackhouse Editions Archive will be on display at The USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa January 11 – February 23, 2008. Waves of Meaning: Robert Stackhouse & Carol Mickett will be on display at The Arts Center in St. Petersburg January 18 – February 23, 2008.

SPONSORED BY:

ASC Geosciences, Inc.

with additional support from a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

Special thanks are extended to the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation for their support in this project.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Delineation: Lines that Define Artworks from the Permanent Collection

November 17, 2007 – February 24, 2008

Perkins Gallery

This exhibition shows the impact that lines can have within an artwork. Ranging from delicate masses of lines that create forms to bold strokes that guide our eyes, the lines used by artists can have a surprising effect on our perception. Artworks included in the exhibition range from etchings and linocuts to paintings and sculptures.

Without Representation

September 8 – December 9, 2007

Ledger and Murray Galleries

Many works of art have no recognizable forms within their compositions. This exhibition presents artworks from the permanent collection that explore the many possibilities open to artistic expression beyond representation. Artists represented in this exhibition include Richard Anuskiewicz, Steven McCallum, Robert Natkin, Tony Robbin, and Victor Vaserely.

Carlos Luna: Personal Histories

August 25 – November 25, 2007

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Carlos Luna’s paintings and works on paper exhibit the beauty, anger, sorrow, passion and hope shared by many people in Cuba. Specifically, what is apparent when viewing Luna’s paintings is his ability to tell beautiful and tragic tales through the body of his work. Luna is able to take his experiences and emotions and translate them into paintings that speak for many. His paintings, though symbolic in nature, are grounded in the real world, and thus carry with them a poignancy not often found in the art world. Beyond that is his exquisite handling of paint within a wide range of complex compositions. From portraits of roosters to swirling, dynamic murals, Luna’s work never fails to elicit dramatic responses.

Intense yet controlled, earthy yet abstract, intimate yet boldly theatrical, dark yet exuding the power of life, Luna’s paintings present the essences of love and hate, freedom and repression, growth and decay—that is to say, all that makes up the human condition.

Carlos Luna was born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba in 1969. He left Cuba in 1991 to live in Puebla, Mexico, where he resided until 2002. Since 2002 he has lived in the United States, currently living in Miami. His work has been exhibited in museums on five continents and is in important collections in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including El Museo del Barrio in New York, Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach and the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. In 2001 he received an award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the same year he received an EB-1-1 (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) Immigrant Visa from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. Polk Museum of Art has worked with the Susquehanna Art Museum and The Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery at Lebanon Valley College as well as the Cisneros Capital Group to organize this exhibition and produce a major catalogue on Luna’s work.

A catalogue of the exhibition is available in the Museum Store.

Works by Artists of Cuban Ancestry from the Permanent Collection

August 18- November 25, 2008

Emily S. Macey Gallery

The Polk Museum of Art has amassed a fine collection of works by artists of Cuban ancestry, both those living still living in Cuba and those living in or born in the United States. Works by Luisa Basnuevo, Jose Bedia, Mario Bencomo, Humberto Calzada, Arturo Rodriguez, and the other artists in the exhibition demonstrate the variety of styles, themes and interests of Cuban and Cuban-American art produced in recent decades.

All Over the Place

August 11 – November 11, 2007

Perkins Gallery

This exhibition of works from the permanent collection will explore how artists use geographical places and settings in their work. Whether rural or urban, natural or manmade, each landscape can inspire different responses.

The exhibition includes works in a wide variety of mediums used to capture the artists’ sense of place. Included in this exhibition will be works inspired by Tibet by Robert Rauschenberg, Austria by Richard Estes, San Francisco by Rene Pauli, and the lushness of central Florida by Margaret Tolbert.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Thirty-Two Aspects of Women

May 12 – September 2, 2007

Ledger and Murray Galleries

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) is considered to be the last and greatest genius of ukiyo-e. The Polk Museum of Art is fortunate to have the entire collection of one of his most revered series of prints, Thirty Two Aspects of Women. Yoshitoshi was born shortly before the Meiji era began in Japan, a time of modernization and increased contact with European nations and the United States. He addressed this western influence by attempting to prevent the loss of Japanese traditions. Much of his work served as reminders to the Japanese people of the importance of their historical and cultural heritage.

Demand for woodblock prints began to fade in 1880 as the old masters began to die and photography and lithography were replacing the traditional methods of creating images. In response, Yoshitoshi turned increasingly to traditional subjects that were recreated using the highest possible standard of production. Yet he admired much of the compositional structure of western art, particularly its ability to depict movement, and he abandoned the traditional vegetable dyes in favor of new and brighter aniline dyes.

His combination of traditional Japanese subject matter with western techniques led to Yoshitoshi’s most popular work. By 1884 he employed more than eighty apprentices, enabling him to try ambitious projects. In 1888 he completed Thirty Two Aspects of Women, revealing his renowned capacity for portraying the complexity of women rather than portraying them as mere objects for the male gaze. Unfortunately, shortly after completing Thirty Two Aspects of Women, Yoshitoshi became ill. In 1891 he was admitted to a mental hospital, but left in the spring of 1892. Yoshitoshi died in June 1892. With his death, the art of ukiyo-e all but ended.

Japanese Textiles from the Permanent Collection

June 2 – August 19, 2007

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

For decades, the Museum has collected Asian art. However, it received a major addition in 2005 when Polk County collectors William D. and Norma Canelas Roth donated more than thirty Japanese textiles in honor of Margaret Wilbanks. This exhibition will mark the first opportunity for these impressive works to be viewed by the public.

Dating from the late 19th century through the mid 20th century, the kimono, vests, jackets and other textiles in this exhibition represent a time of transition and great artistic creativity in the development of Japanese fashion. Through World War II, the kimono was the standard garment worn by most Japanese people for all occasions. Once the war ended, Western dress became more popular with the kimono assuming a more formal or ceremonial role. The Roth collection includes garments for men, women and children as well as a number of important “folk” textiles, garments created by and for the rural people of Japan.

Fruits and Flowers: Dalí’s Botanical Prints

June 2 – August 12, 2007

Emily S. Macey Gallery

This exhibition includes 24 prints by Salvador Dalí from his FlorDalí series. These prints demonstrate Dalí’s skill at creating collaged imagery from previously printed material as well as his own work. This exhibition has been curated and toured by the Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL.

Throughout his career, Dalí (1904-1989) looked to old book illustrations for inspiration. In the four folios represented in this exhibition, visitors will see the transformation that occurs as he moves from working directly from original, scientific botanical illustrations to making additions to them and finally to combining images to create wholly new and utterly fantastic visual ideas.

Mamie Holst: Landscape Before Dying

May 26 – August 5, 2007

Perkins Gallery

Fort Myers artist Mamie Holst has exhibited her work throughout the country and in Europe. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from University of West Florida in Pensacola and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Visual Arts in New York. Among the awards and honors she has received was a 2005 Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She is currently represented by Feature Inc., New York.

After earning her MFA degree, Holst settled outside of New York to pursue a career as an artist. However she soon began to encounter difficulties in working. In 1989 Holst was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), an illness characterized by incapacitating fatigue, problems with memory, difficulties in information processing, and a vast array of other symptoms. In Holst’s case, CFIDS severely limits the amount of time and energy she can devote to any activity, including painting. In 1992 her illness led her to move to Fort Myers to live with her family. Landscape Before Dying is a series Holst began a few years after her return to Florida, a series she continues to work on.

This exhibition of works from the series features 30 acrylic paintings on canvas from 1998-2005. Painted in white, black and shades of gray, these non-representational artworks represent the subconscious workings of Holst’s mind, in a sense mapping out her thoughts as she heads out into unknown territory. Though much of her work prior to the onset of CFIDS was sculptural in nature, often large-scale and often quite colorful, the illness led her back to small-scale paintings using nothing but black and white. The small size of these canvases is a result of her limited energy. The lack of color is a result of the increased difficulty in making decisions about details.

However much these limitations might have impacted the direction of her art, they have brought a greater intensity to those elements on which she remains focused. Beginning with a small black and white painting in 1997, which depicted a stark, uncertain landscape, Holst saw the potential for an exploration of how the most basic artistic forms could be used to depict life’s possibilities. Her series is not conceived as a series of answers; rather the paintings pose abstract questions. The paintings are not intended to be particularly morbid or even directly concerned with death as an end; instead, Holst believes that death is a part of life, “just a passing from one plane.” Her paintings address in very open ways the nature of relationships any of us might have with one another or the greater world around us during our lifetimes.

These are ambitious goals for paintings that make every attempt to avoid interaction with us, with their diminutive scale and lack of loud colors. But they connect to us through a shared sense of uncertainty about life, even if we have varying approaches to life or visions of what lies far ahead. Through her Landscape Before Dying series, Holst continues to use abstracted simplicity to find that the distance between now and far ahead can be filled with unimagined options.

Kickin’ It with Joyce J. Scott

April 7 – May 27, 2007

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

For over three decades, Joyce J. Scott has been creating objects of exceptional skill and beauty while offering her own distinctive commentary on social issues such as stereotyping, violence, and the prejudice that we all confront at some point in our lives. Now, a national retrospective of her 30-year career, Kickin’ It with Joyce J. Scott, opening April 7, 2007 at Polk Museum of Art, pays tribute to her remarkable career by presenting 60 of her works created since 1970. This comprehensive exhibition includes sculpture, jewelry, prints, and textiles as well as videos and photographs of Scott’s performance and installation work.

The foundation of Scott’s art is craft. Though she often mixes materials—ceramic, glass, cloth, and metal—beads are prevalent in her work: a glittering, beaded surface is a signature element of her oeuvre. If her subject matter is sometimes harsh, it is leavened by her wry humor and masterly technique. And her influences, from African and Native American experiences to comic books, television, and other venues of popular American culture, are as wide ranging as her media.

Joyce J. Scott was born in Baltimore and still lives in the neighborhood where she was raised. Scott received a B.F.A. degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a M.F.A. in crafts from Institute Allende in Mexico, with further study at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine.

Scott’s earliest art lessons were received at home from her mother, the renowned fiber artist, Elizabeth Talford Scott. She began to be influenced from an early age by three generations of basketmakers, quilters, storytellers, and wood, metal and clay workers. At the center of this generative heritage was the influence of Africa, where the creation of utilitarian objects of beauty is everyday practice. In keeping with traditional African practices, Scott often uses beads as medium.

Scott is renowned for her striking creations and biting social commentary on issues such as racism, violence, sexism and stereotypes. She writes, “I believe in messing with stereotypes, prodding the viewer to reassess.” According to Scott, “It’s important to me to use art in a manner that incites people to look and then carry something home – even if it’s subliminal – that might make a change in them…I am a visual and performance artist because it’s my best voice as a human. It allows interaction, sometimes masked, even scabrous, in ways polite society finds uncomfortable,” writes Scott. “My work is not meant to be openly offensive. I skirt the borders between comedy, pathos, delight, and horror. I invite the viewer to laugh at our collective selves. Humans are hilariously precocious.”

Joyce Scott exhibits, performs, and lectures nationally and internationally and is the recipient of prestigious honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman and the American Craft Council.

Kickin’ It with Joyce J. Scott is made possible by a generous grant from Altria Group, Inc. The exhibition is curated by George Ciscle, Curator-in-Residence, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and organized and toured by ExhibitsUSA. ExhibitsUSA is a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance, a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1972.

Scott will attend the opening reception of the exhibition on Friday, April 13 and will introduce her work with a lecture at 6:00pm. On Saturday, April 14,1-4:30pm, Scott will present a performance and two other prominent scholars will join us for Dialogues with Artists.

RELATED EVENTS:

Members’ Celebration Opening Reception
Friday, April 13, 2007 | 6:00 – 8:00pm
Lecture by Joyce J. Scott at 6:00pm
FREE for Members, $5 Guests

Join us on April 13 for the Members’ Celebration Opening Reception for Kickin’ It With Joyce J. Scott. The artist will attend and will give a lecture about her work at 6:00pm. The reception will follow. Cash Bar.

Dialogues With Artists: Joyce J. Scott
Saturday, April 14, 2007 | 1:00 – 4:30pm
$20 Members, $25 Non-Members, $10 Students with I.D.

Internationally acclaimed artist Joyce Scott will give a live performance in conjunction with the exhibition Kickin’ It with Joyce J. Scott on Saturday, April 14th. The performance is open to the public. Scott is well known for her performances and uses her art to speak out about racism, sexism, and other prejudices.

In addition to Scott’s performance there will be lectures by Dr. Leslie King-Hammond and author Mel Watkins. Dr. King-Hammond is dean of graduate studies at the Maryland Institute, College of Art and is considered one of the foremost authorities of African American aesthetics, women studies, and contemporary twentieth-century art history. Mel Watkins is the author of On the Real Side, A History of African-American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock and Dancing with Strangers, a recollection of growing up in Midwestern American in the 1950s and 1960s. He will talk about Joyce Scott’s role as a performer and humorist within the context of African American humor.

Dialogues with Artists (Formally Symposium) is a new program bringing multicultural artists to Polk County to participate in this year’s exhibitions and outreach programs. Dialogues attempts to enrich the community by exposing audiences to art through exhibitions, personal conversations with selected artists from the shows, and through workshops directed to both at-risk youth organizations and high school teachers. The dialogues program illustrates how art can be an effective personal storytelling tool for educating, a method for documenting, and finally, a way to engage one’s art with community.

The Dialogues with Artists program is made possible by a Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Monica Naugle: Oppositional Essences

March 3 – May 20, 2007

Perkins Gallery

Plant City artist Monica Naugle utilizes harsh and often discarded metal and other materials to create unusually delicate sculptures. She weaves forms that are either directly recognizable (clothing or purse, for example) or sufficiently organic in appearance as to seem perfectly natural. Naugle is a native of Colombia who has lived in Florida since 1978. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Tampa Bay area in museums and through public commissions, but this is the Polk Museum of Art’s first opportunity to exhibit her work.

Laying it on Thick (or Thin): Paintings from the Permanent Collection

January 13 – April 22, 2007

Ledger and Murray Galleries

From the chunkiest acrylic paintings and the most elegant oil paintings to delicate watercolors and the glasslike quality of encaustics, this exhibition of paintings from the permanent collection will give visitors the opportunity to view all the wide range of textures and forms artists can achieve with paint.

Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius

February 3 – April 1, 2007

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

Opening with a February 2 reception and lecture by John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Director Emeritus, Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius is a blockbuster exhibition featuring 150 photographs by Ansel Adams. Celebration of Genius presents work from the 1920s through the 1960s, all part of the collection of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

On a summer day in 1916, at the age of fourteen, Ansel Adams saw the breathtaking Yosemite Valley for the first time. With a Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie, he proceeded to make pictures. Perhaps he had an inkling that this magical place would be forever entwined with his destiny. Adams remains among the few photographers in history whose name and work enjoy world-wide recognition. His stunning landscapes and intimate still lifes of nature continue to captivate viewers. While many come to know his work through widely published books, postcards, posters and calendars, relatively few have actually seen his lushly printed original images.

This exhibition presents work from the 1920s through the 1960s, including an early 1927 portfolio (one of only 50 produced) of Parmelian prints (gelatin silver emulsion on parchment paper). For the first time, George Eastman House is pleased to include this portfolio from its collection in this exhibition. Featured are many of Adams’s most famous images of the American West, but prepare to discover equally stupendous, if less well known, images such as Mud Hills, Arizona or Water and Foam. Many will be surprised to see that Adams did not confine himself to landscapes, but also made portraits and other subjects as humble as fence posts into images nearly as monumental as his beloved mountain ranges.

In the course of his long life, Adams would produce eight portfolios and have work in more than 500 exhibitions. A prolific writer, he published 37 books and hundreds of articles about photography. In 1932 Adams was instrumental in the founding of Group f/64, a short-lived but influential group of California photographers who brought artistic legitimacy to “straight” photography. Adams also helped establish the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona to house his archives. He received many national and international awards, honorary degrees, three Guggenheim Fellowships, and had a wilderness area and mountain named after him. He is the only photographer to be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, which he received in 1980. Adams died in Carmel, California on April 22, 1984.

This exhibition is organized by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

PREMIER EXHIBITION SPONSORS:

Yvonne L. Boyington Family Fund within the Community Foundation of Greater Lakeland

EXHIBITION SPONSORS:

Mr. Lawrence Hjersted
Ron and Becky Johnson

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT BY:

Douglass Screen Printers, Inc.
The Ledger

Related Programs

MEMBERS’ CELEBRATION
Friday, February 2, 2007 | 6:00 – 8:30pm
FREE for Museum members, $10 for Non-Members

Come to Polk Museum of Art for the opening reception for Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius. The evening starts with a special lecture by John Szakowski, Director Emeritus of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Szarkowski is the most influential photography curator of the last half century, and his books, exhibitions, films and lectures have molded the current thinking about photography as an art form. After the lecture, you will have the opportunity to browse the Ansel Adams exhibition on your own. Light hors d’oeuvres will be served and a cash bar will be available.

DIALOGUES WITH ARTISTS SERIES: JOHN SZARKOWSKI
Director Emeritus of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
Friday, February 2, 2007 | 6:00pm
FREE to Members, $10 Guests

The Museum is pleased to kick off Dialogues with Artists, a new series of educational events, at the opening reception for Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius. On Friday, February 2 at 6:00pm, John Szarkowski will introduce the work of Ansel Adams through a presentation in the Museum’s auditorium. Szarkowski is undoubtedly the most influential person of the last half century on the development of photography in the United States. From 1962 to 1991, he served as Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, turning a department that Ansel Adams had helped found in 1940 into the most dynamic photography collection in the country. During his tenure, he launched the careers of Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander, sealed the reputations of figures such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, and Eugene Atget, and gave Ansel Adams a one-person exhibition in 1979. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and New York University and has authored dozens of important books including The Photographer’s Eye (1964), Looking at Photographs (1973), Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960 (1978), and Photography Until Now (1989-90). In 1990, U.S. News & World Report said: “Szarkowski’s thinking, whether Americans know it or not, has become our thinking about photography”. In 2001, he curated the major exhibition Ansel Adams at 100 for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and wrote the accompanying catalogue, perhaps the most definitive book on Adams.

The Dialogues With Artists Series is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

SLIDE SLAM & JPEG JAM
Theme: Landscapes Near and Far
February 12, 2007 | 6:00pm

Photographers are invited to present (5) slides or digital images of their work for group discussion. Participate in an evening of sharing work and ideas with other photography enthusiasts, tour the Ansel Adams exhibition with a docent or curator and enjoy light refreshments. Call the Education Department at 863-688-5423 for ticket information.

SPECIAL FILM SERIES
Every Wednesday and Sunday, February 3 – April 1, 2007 | 1:00pm
NO FILM Sunday, February 24 and Sunday, March 10

American Experience: Ansel Adams
PBS describes Ric Burns’ film biography of Adams as “an intimate portrait of a man for whom life and art were inextricably connected with photography and wilderness.” Few American artists have enjoyed more widespread popularity while alive than Ansel Adams. A visionary photographer, pioneer in technique, and environmental crusader, Adams took part in a revolution in photography, and in the ways he saw “the continuous beauty of the things that are.” (90 min.)

Speaking of Art: John Szarkowski on Ansel Adams
This film on Ansel Adams tackles the deeper significance of Adams’ work beyond his enduring popularity as an environmental pioneer and rhapsodist of the American West. “Adams did not photograph the landscape as a matter of social service, but as a form of private worship. It was his own soul that he was trying to save. He was confessing to a private knowledge that is almost surely incommunicable but that he was nevertheless obliged to attempt to photograph.” (40 min.)

John Szarkowski: A Life in Photography
is a 47-minute video produced by Richard B. Woodward. (Checkerboard Foundation, 1998). For nearly 30 years, from 1962-1991, John Szarkowski served as the Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This film examines his double life as curator and photographer. Szarkowski, author of the classic Looking at Photographs, has taught generations how to think about and look at images. (Description courtesy of International Center of Photography.)

GALLERY TALKS
February 6 – March 27, 2007 | 10:30am

For eight Tuesday mornings join the Executive Director, Curator of Art, or Curator of Education for a tour of the Ansel Adams exhibition. Talks will be held February 6, 13, 20, and 27, and March 6, 13, 20, and 27.

No Paper Tigers: Paper Artworks from the Permanent Collection

December 2, 2006 – February 21, 2007

Perkins Gallery

Paper is often overlooked as a material for artworks. This exhibition includes artworks that present paper as sculptural material, as the means for creating collages, or as the backdrop for impressive drawings, paintings or prints. Among the artists represented in No Paper Tigers are Akiko Sugiyama, Roy De Forest, Lise Drost, Sam Gilliam, Bud Hopkins, Howardena Pindell, Kendall Shaw and Ann Turnley.