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Recent Acquisitions Releases Press Release Archive |
Tyler Museum of Art Plans Varied Exhibitions for 2006 Tyler, TX—If your New Year’s resolutions include “visit exciting places” or “try something new”, the Tyler Museum of Art can help you be successful this year. The Museum’s 2006 exhibition and events calendar includes many ways to experience incredible art, learn new skills, and meet interesting people. “Visitors always find something new at the TMA,” promised Kimberley Tomio, Tyler Museum of Art director. “Regardless of their age, life experiences or education, people can be changed, challenged and often cheered up by viewing fine art. It enriches our lives and transports us to a different place. Art–both viewing and creating it–connects us to other people, other places, other times.” Opening January 14, The Photography of Alonzo Jordan: Images of Jasper, 1943-1983 distills the essence of life in rural East Texas as seen through the lens of this African-American photographer. Jordan, working in Jasper and other surrounding towns, worked as both a barber and professional photographer, specializing in school and wedding photographs. His works document the everyday occurrences and special occasions of his subjects, living separate—but rarely equal—lives of their white counterparts. This exhibition is organized by the African-American Photography Archive, Dallas. On exhibit now until February 26 at the TMA is Harry Worthman: A Life in Art Worthman (1909–1989) was nationally recognized as a portrait artist for his commissioned oil on canvas images of the famous—from presidents and governors to astronauts and business tycoons. But in this first major museum exhibition of his work, Worthman’s talent as a landscape and still life artist is also quite evident. The TMA will retain its focus on early to modern Texas artists with two spring exhibitions. Rosalie Speed: Rediscovered Texas Treasure runs February 24 through May 21. Gisela-Heidi and Jürgen Strunck: Sculptures & Prints is open March 10 through May 14. Most prolific between 1932–1950, Rosalie Speed often produced Regional compositions focused on images from the deep South, with vibrant colors and engaging vistas. Her painting Old and Modern Towers was included in the Centennial Exhibition of the State Fair of Texas in 1936. And quite remarkably for the time, she had two one-woman exhibitions (1941 and 1947) at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. After her mother’s death in 1950, Speed virtually stopped painting, spending her time caring for her father until his death in 1983 at the age of 106. Rosalie Speed died in 2004 at the age of 100. Following her death a cache of her work was discovered in the attic, closets and other out-of-the way places in her home in Dallas, where she had lived nearly her entire life. The majority of these works–most of which have not been seen publicly for over 50 years–will be presented in this exhibition organized by the Tyler Museum of Art. The TMA will offer a much more contemporary and untraditional exhibition with the works of Gisela-Heidi and Jürgen Strunck, German natives who now call Texas home. The couple is recognized for their varied and original creations: she for sculpture, he for printmaking. Gisela-Heidi’s early works have been called “funky, bright and textural…truly unique.” Her recent mixed media creations, created after losing her sight, are heavily inspired by non-Western religious symbolism. Jürgen is well-known for developing and refining special printing techniques that showcase shape and color gradations in kaleidoscopic patterns. The Museum’s most prestigious exhibition for the year will begin June 9, with the opening of Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible. This exhibition, organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Saint John’s University and funded by Target, presents the very rare and most significant handwritten and illuminated Bible commissioned since the advent of the printing press more than 500 years ago. The Saint John’s Bible is a richly ornamented masterwork, hand-illustrated with gold leaf on oversized calf-skin vellum, and is considered an unprecedented undertaking in contemporary book arts. The artistic director of the project, who oversees its production in a scriptorium in Wales, is Donald Jackson, one of the world’s foremost calligraphers and serves as scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s Crown Office in the House of Lords. Several educational lectures and workshops will be offered in conjunction with the Illuminating the Word exhibition which runs at the TMA through September 3, after which it will be shown at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Other events on this year’s exhibition calendar include the TMA’s 2nd Annual High School Art Exhibition, March 4-March 26, and the Tyler Art Instructors Exhibition, April 8-April 30. In the fall, the works of another artistic Texas couple, Elizabeth Akamatsu and Piero Fenci, will be featured at the TMA. Fenci’s beautiful ceramics and Akamatsu’s captivating sculptures will intrigue Museum-goers from September 22-October 22. With a different medium but similarly intriguing, Houston photographer George O. Jackson Jr.’s 11-year work known as the Essence of Mexico Project, will be featured in the exhibition Encanto Mexicano: Enchanting Pictures of the Essence of Mexico September 15 through November 5. Additional exhibitions, Family Days, special events, workshops and children’s summer art camps are also scheduled. To learn more call 903-595-1001. |