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Racine, WI     October 24, 2012
 
 
New Featured Acquisition
The Racine Art Museum Debuts Ruth Duckworth's Sculpture


The Racine Art Museum (RAM) is pleased to debut Ruth Duckworth's sculpture Untitled, 1999, which has just entered the museum's collection. RAM thanks long-time benefactor, Karen Johnson Boyd, for continuing to donate exciting works like this to the permanent contemporary craft collection.     

Ruth Duckworth, Untitled, 1999, Glazed stoneware 14 1/2 x 11 x 11 inches, Racine Art Museum, Gift of Karen Johnson Boyd in Honor of Ruth Duckworth,
Photography: Jon Bolton, Racine, WI.
This ceramic work is made up of three wedge-like forms that rise from a matching base to pointed tops. These abstract elements are grouped in a way that suggests a variety of arrangements-three figures, trees in a landscape, a still life composition, or three architectural structures on a plaza.

To welcome this acquisition, RAM is also presenting four additional small-scale Duckworth pieces from the museum's collection. Each of these works echoes some aspect of the newly-arrived sculpture. Three are pairs whose interior spaces contain elements that interact visually and/or physically with each other. The fourth work is an abstracted vessel whose rim is intersected by the insertion of a flat shard of clay. Although this piece suggests the traditional relationship between a container and its lid, the intersection of these two forms is also reminiscent of the way Duckworth deftly focuses on the interplay of shapes in much of her work.

RAM currently owns 15 examples of the artist's work from throughout her career donated by Mrs. Boyd, James T. Gibson, Jr., Abbas Kessel and Ruth Miner-Kessel, and Donna Moog. This in-depth approach to collecting allows the museum to demonstrate how Duckworth's work developed over a long period of time and encourage a better understanding and appreciation of her achievements as an artist.

 

Exhibitions are made possible at Racine Art Museum by: Presenting Sponsors - Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd, Emile H. Mathis II Estate, in Memory of his Parents: Emil H. and Anna T. Mathis, RAM Society Members, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., and Windgate Charitable Foundation.
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Together, the two campuses of the Racine Art Museum, RAM in downtown Racine at 441 Main Street and the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts at 2519 Northwestern Avenue, seek to elevate the stature of contemporary crafts to that of fine art by exhibiting significant works in craft media with painting, sculpture and photography, while providing outstanding educational art programming.

Docent led contemporary craft and architectural tours of the museums are available. Both campuses of the Racine Art Museum, are open to the public Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 am - 5:00 pm, and are closed Mondays, Federal holidays and Easter. RAM is open Sunday Noon - 5:00 pm, while Wustum is closed Sundays. An admission fee of $5 for adults, with reduced fees for students and seniors, applies at RAM. Admission to Wustum is free. Members are always admitted without charge to either campus.

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For more information or to request images, please contact:

Laura Gillespie
RAM Marketing Assistant
262.638.8300 x 114