This exhibition highlights for the first time the prints of David C. Driskell, artist, art historian, collector, educator, and one of the most respected names in the world of African American art and culture. With more than 75 prints, as well as several works on paper, Evolution provides insight into Driskell's artistic process and development, as well as the influence of African art on American modernism. He has been a practicing artist since the 1950s and his works are in major museums throughout the world, including the Portland Museum of Art. Since 1977 Driskell has also served as the cultural advisor to Camille and Bill Cosby and is the curator of their collection. In 2000, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton. Driskell maintains a deep connection to Maine, as he has summered here for decades and is active at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. 
 

Peter Lenzo, formerly a professor of ceramics at the University of South Carolina, now lives in that state where he produces work in a form related to 19th century southern folk traditions: the face jug and the memory pot. The small found objects ceramics and other objects that decorate the heads, many of which are self-portraits, are of a personal symbolic nature and not meant to be a commentary, necessarily, on material culture.

Andy Nasisse, an emeritus professor of ceramics at the University of Georgia, has for years used the face and human form as an important element of his art, which is also infused by his life-long interest in art by untrained, folk, or outsider artists.

There is a long-standing confluence between modernism and the art of those who are far from the accepted modes of creativity and it is exhibited in the work of both of these otherwise very different artists. 

  
San Diego Museum of Art , San Diego, CA
 
Calder Jewelry
Through January 3, 2010

For the first time, jewelry created by the great American sculptor Alexander Calder is the subject of a comprehensive exhibition entitled Calder Jewelry.

Calder Jewelry brings together approximately 90 works by the famed modernist - including necklaces, bracelets, brooches, earrings and tiaras - that demonstrate the artist's love of abstraction and his unique mastery of this wearable art form. The works in the exhibition were all worn by family and close friends of the artist, as well as by some of the most celebrated figures in 20th-century cultural history.

Picasso, Miró, Calder
Through December 6, 2009
This exhibition features works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Joan Miró (1893-1983), and Alexander Calder (1898-1976), unquestionably three of the greatest artists working in the twentieth century. Conceived as a complement to Calder Jewelry, this installation will celebrate the generosity of the Museum's donors-whose support is so critical to the institution's success-and bring out a choice selection of the Museum's collection of modernist painting and sculpture that has long been out of sight. Picasso, Miró, Calder will be a taste of great things to come in 2010: the Museum's curatorial team is planning a full reinstallation of holdings from the modern collection over the course of the year. Come rediscover some of your favorite artists from the height of the modern age.