News and Events | Montana Museum of Art & Culture | August 2014 

 
In This Issue
Through September 27, 2014
The Art of the State
MMAC at Out to Lunch
Summer Tours
Gift to MMAC
Artwork of the Month

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Meloy & Paxson Galleries 

UM PARTV Center

 

 

SUMMER GALLERY HOURS
MAY 21 - AUGUST 24, 2014 

Wed., Thurs., Sat. 12 - 3pm
Fri. 12 - 6pm
  

ACADEMIC YEAR GALLERY HOURS

AUGUST 25, 2014 - MAY 16, 2015

Tues., Wed., Sat. 12 - 3pm
Thurs. and Fri. 12 - 6pm
 

THROUGH SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

 

Sandra Dal Poggetto: Meditations on the Field

 

Meloy and Paxson Galleries

 

Helena-based artist Sandra Dal Poggetto is featured in a solo exhibition of new and recent works. 

Dal Poggetto uses an abstract language and fragments of the western landscape-hide, feathers, wood and wire-to create evocative paintings and drawings. She draws on and deconstructs both Euro-American pictorial language and American Indian visual traditions to create uneasy syntheses which Pulitzer-Prize winning author/critic Mark Stevens describes as "truthful reflection[s] of our culture's complex relation to the landscape of the West." 

In addition to displaying her artwork, Dal Poggetto selected objects from the museum's Permanent Collection to illustrate different philosophical and aesthetic understandings of the human relationship to the natural world. Through Dal Poggetto's re-contextualization of these works, she probes, questions and reveals the past, calling for a renewed connection with nature.

 

Banner Image: detail, Sandra Dal Poggetto, American Fork #11, ca. 2014, 

90 x 109 5/8 inches, courtesy of the artist
 

Image: Birch Bark Basket Tray with Porcupine Quill decoration,

Anishanaabe/Ojibway Culture, Georgian Bay, Canada, no date, MMAC Permanent Collection, Donated by Dorothy Jordan Brading

 

SPECIAL EVENTS


Thursday, September 11, 2014, 7:00pm, Meloy Gallery

UM PARTV Center

In the Gallery with artist Sandra Dal Poggetto who will share an overview of her new large

scale American Fork paintings within the exhibition

 

Thursday, September 25, 2014, 5:00 -5:45pm, Masquer Theatre

UM PARTV Center

A conversation with artist Sandra Dal Poggetto and Mark Stevens, Pulitzer Prize-winning

author of DeKooning: An American Master

AND

5:45-7:00pm UM PARTV Center Lobby

Closing Reception

 

Docent tours available upon request.

All events are open to the public. All tours begin in the PARTV Center Lobby.

  

MMAC AT OUT TO LUNCH

 
 
We had a great time Wednesday, July 23rd co-sponsoring Out Lunch in Caras Park with MTPR. Thank you to everyone who came out to visit!

 

Congratulations to Sarah Trotter of Missoula who was the winner of our Out to Lunch raffle.

 

She won:
 

- A private tour of our galleries

 

- One night for two at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel

 

- A $100 gift certificate to Finn and Porter

 

Thank you to all who entered and to Dan Carlino at the Doubletree!


 

 

Photo:L to R: MMAC Membership and Administration Coordinator Jessica Abell, MMAC Director Barbara Koostra, MMAC Advisory Council Chair Greg Timmons, MMAC Curator of Art Brandon Reintjes. Image by Dr. Herbert Swick

 

SUMMER TOURS

 
Words with Wings

In July, MMAC was honored to host the young poets who took part in Words With Wings, the Missoula Writing Collaborative's annual summer camp which focuses on creative writing for ages 8 - 14.  Artist Sandra Dal Poggetto gave campers a tour of MMAC's current exhibition Sandra Dal Poggetto: Meditations on the Field. The young writers then gathered in the PARTV lobby to continue writing and reading their work aloud.

Many thanks to Sandra Dal Poggetto and MMAC docents Dolly Browder, Linda Richards, Dani Sacks and Dr. Herbert Swick for assisting with the tours. 

 


  

 
Photo: Words With Wings campers 

 

GIFT TO MMAC

 

MMAC has received a gift of archival material from Montana artist Henry Irvin Shope (American, 1900-1977), known as "Shorty". The materials were generously donated by Harry and Suzanne Hyatt. In addition to original drawings, the gift includes letters and biographical material, which will be housed in the Archives and Special Collections at the Mansfield Library.


Shope grew up working on Montana ranches. In 1913, he moved to Missoula. He was influenced by renowned painters Edgar S. Paxson and Charles M. Russell. Russell was impressed with Shorty and wrote on the back of one of his drawings, "These drawings of Shope's are all good." He signed with his trademark buffalo skull and offered the younger artist advice not to study in the east. Russell said, "Don't do it. The men, horses, and country you love and want to study are out here, not back there." 

 

Shorty graduated from UM in 1933 with a degree in Fine Arts and History. He went on to work as an artist for the State of Montana in Helena, producing maps, murals, tourism materials and posters, primarily for the Montana Department of Transportation. In 1934, he completed three murals for the UM School of Forestry as part of the Works Progress Administration. Throughout the 1950's three more were commissioned. Collectively, these murals depict the evolution of forestry as a profession and the emergence of modern conservation practices. To commemorate the centennial of the founding of the program, the College of Forestry and Conservation commissioned Missoula artist Hadley E. Ferguson to create three additional murals titled Views on Forest Conservation and Management: 2014 and Beyond. The murals will hang adjacent to Shorty's work and depict new phases of forestry: Fire as a Forest Management ToolWildlands for Recreation and Resources and Research and Learning in the Aquatic Environment. The murals will be installed and unveiled this fall. 

 
 
Image:  Henry Irvin "Shorty" Shope (American, 1900-1977), Untitled (Sketch for The Advent of Scientific Forestry), 1957, pencil on paper, 16x 12 inches, donated by Harry and Suzanne Hyatt

 

ARTWORK OF THE MONTH 

   

This Month's Feature: 

 

Titled: Untitled

Artist: Gennie DeWeese

Medium: oil on panel

Size: 12 3/8 x 8 5/8

Gift by transfer from the Holter Museum of Art

 

DeWeese was a pioneering Modernist who, along with her husband Robert, influenced the development of contemporary art in Montana. Gennie was born Genevieve Adams in Indianapolis, IN. She met her future husband while attending Ohio State University in 1942. Gennie completed a Secondary Teaching Certificate at the University of Michigan and taught school in Wilmington, DE during WWII. She moved briefly to New York City and later worked in an Army hospital in Battle Creek, MI. After the war, she worked as a substitute teacher in Detroit and painted. 

 

The DeWeese's married in 1946 and began raising a family. In 1949, Robert accepted a faculty position in the art department at Montana State University, Bozeman. Their home on Cottonwood Creek  became a gathering place for intellectuals and artists. Gennie balanced the demands of motherhood, raising four children while maintaining her significant painting practice, pioneering the use of cattle markers and rolled screens to create large-scale landscapes and abstractions. 

  

 

 

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