Fenimore Art Museum Announces 2015 Exhibition Schedule

(COOPERSTOWN, NY – January 23, 2015)—The Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, has announced its schedule of ten new exhibitions running April 1 through December 31, 2015.  The season is filled with exceptional works of art presented through a variety of intriguing curations.  Exhibitions highlight well-known artists such as Marc Chagall, Maxfield Parrish, Raymond Han, Steven Skollar, as well as masterpieces in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the world-renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art at the Fenimore Art Museum.

The season opens with six exhibitions including Marc Chagall’s Magic Flute: Highlights from the Metropolitan Opera (April 1 – December 31), 50 at 20: Masterpieces of American Indian Art from the Thaw Collection (April 1 – December 31), and Colorama (April 1 – June 21).

The summer season is highlighted by Maxfield Parrish: The Art of Light and Illusion (May 23 – September 7), Raymond Han: Still Lifes and Figures (June 20 – December 31), and Real and Imagined: The Paintings of Steven Skollar (April 1 – December 31).

Other 2015 exhibitions include Photographs by Brenda Mitten: The 10th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial (April 1 – June 7), Autopsy for a Nation: The Death of Abraham Lincoln (April 1 – December 31), Lavern Kelley: The Art of the Farm (September 19 – December 31), and our fall folk art related exhibit “A Perfect Likeness”: Folk Portraits and Early Photography (October 10 – December 31).

For more information on our 2015 exhibitions, related programs, and our $2.00-off admission coupon, please visit FenimoreArtMuseum.org.  The Fenimore Art Museum is open April 1 – December 31, 2015.  Spring hours: 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday (closed Mondays).  Summer hours: open daily 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (beginning May 11).

This exhibition season is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Upcoming 2015 Exhibitions:

(Summer Highlight Exhibition)
Maxfield Parrish: The Art of Light and Illusion
May 23 – September 7, 2015
As one of the most popular American artists of the twentieth century, Maxfield Parrish created fantastic images of fairy-tale figures and idyllic landscapes in a style that was all his own. Through a prolific career that spanned from the 1890s through the 1960s, Parrish became one of America’s first truly “public” artists. The mass reproduction of his paintings—originally intended as book and magazine illustrations, advertisements, calendars, and murals—ensured his reputation as one of the most widely-known figures in the history of art. It has been said that in 1925 a lithograph of his most well-known painting Daybreak could be found in one out of every four American homes.  Parrish’s magical artwork continues to capture the imagination and inspire today’s artists, musicians, and filmmakers.

The exhibition features approximately 45 pieces, including paintings, prints, and sketches.  Photographs show Parrish’s influence in contemporary films.  It also  includes props, models, and tools that illustrate the intricate creative process used by Parrish enabling him to produce these fantastical works of American art.

Marc Chagall’s Magic Flute: Highlights from the Metropolitan Opera
April 1 – December 31, 2015
In our continuing series of exhibitions that complement The Glimmerglass Festival’s summer schedule, the Fenimore Art Museum will exhibit artifacts associated with the Metropolitan Opera’s 1967 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which featured famed artist Marc Chagall overseeing all aspects of artistic design.  Every item Chagall created for the production, from the costumes and backdrops to the visuals for publicity, boldly reflected his eye-catching style, which took an already colorful 18th-century masterpiece to even loftier creative heights.

The exhibition features six outlandishly vibrant costumes and four fantastical masks, each designed and hand-painted by Chagall himself.  Alongside are photographs and other related artifacts that assist in telling the story of his influence on this particular production.  The pieces are on loan from the Metropolitan Opera.

50 at 20: Masterpieces of American Indian Art from the Thaw Collection
April 1 – December 31, 2015
Celebrating 20 years of the Thaw Collection at the Fenimore Art Museum, this exhibition will highlight 50 outstanding works of American Indian Art spanning 2,000 years of art in North America. With its superb masterpieces, it aims to clearly highlight the philosophical foundation of the collection. Through the voice of Native artists, scholars, as well as Native and non-Native curators, the exhibit seeks to explore the tangible, as well as intangible qualities that make a masterpiece.

Colorama
April 1 – June 21, 2015
For 40 years, the enormous color transparencies that graced Grand Central Terminal touched the hearts of millions. Today, they represent not only an appealing and believable idealization of American life, but a nuanced and effective use of photographs to create desire for the products and activities they sold. Thirty-five of these Coloramas are reproduced in the George Eastman House exhibition Colorama. The majority of the images in the exhibition were made in the 1960s—arguably Colorama’s heyday and a time of great social change in America. The George Eastman House is pleased to share these Coloramas with a new generation of viewers, who, we hope, will respond, not only as Edward Steichen did in 1950, “agog and smiling, all just feeling good,” but with a thought as to how these productions shaped a generation and its ideas about the world.

Photographs by Brenda Mitten:
The 10th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial
April 1 – June 7, 2015
Brenda Mitten‘s photography records the community of Six Nations (including Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Tuscarora, and Seneca) on an everyday basis, and forms a perfect comparison to the presentation of 18th- and 19th-century daily life among the Iroquois in the Fenimore’s outdoor exhibit Otsego: A Meeting Place. It also, importantly, underscores the fact that the Iroquois are still a vibrant community in New York.

The Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial was initiated with the acquisition of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art to celebrate and exhibit contemporary Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) art. G. Peter Jemison (Heron Clan, Seneca) curator of the Biennial, chooses one artist or a group of artists from the various nations of the Iroquois to exhibit.

Real and Imagined: The Paintings of Steven Skollar
April 1 – December 31, 2015
An exhibit of approximately 15 works by painter Steve Skollar will be featured in the Fenimore’s East Gallery. Skollar, who has studios both in Brooklyn and Central New York, has steadily built an international reputation for his extraordinary portraits of both toys and people. Working with a technique that calls to mind 17th-century Dutch masters and classic illustrators such as Maxfield Parrish, Skollar uses his superb technical mastery to make witty commentary on the human condition. A highlight exhibit of Maxfield Parrish’s paintings and prints will be on exhibit in the adjoining gallery, further illustrating the link between these two exceptional artists.

Autopsy for a Nation: The Death of Abraham Lincoln
April 1 – December 31, 2015
Commemorating the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, this small installation will include the autopsy and physician’s report from the collection housed at the Fenimore Art Museum. These reports by Dr. Joseph Janvier Woodward and Dr. R. K. Stone detail the physical damage done by the assassin’s bullet. The exhibit will also display other Lincoln-related items from the period of his death from the museum’s collections.

John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865, just five days after the war ended. The President died early the next morning, plunging the entire country, North and South, into deep mourning. The President’s body was carried in state aboard a funeral train that made its way from Washington, D.C. through 180 cities and seven states on its way for burial in Lincoln’s home state of Illinois. The train visited cities and towns, with local newspapers noting the scheduled stops. The coffin was then transported by horsedrawn hearse and led by solemn processions to a public building for viewing. In New York City, thousands of mourners flocked to pay tribute to the slain President.

Raymond Han: Still Lifes and Figures
June 20 – December 31, 2015
Raymond Han is a master of still life and figurative painting.  He is best known for his realist works which display tight renderings of figures and objects against pearly, almost featureless backgrounds. Han’s more recent works feature the inclusion of brilliant color fields that warm the otherwise de-saturated palette.

The exhibition features approximately 20 of Raymond Han’s large scale paintings, including examples of recent figurative paintings and still lifes.

Han is an American painter, born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1931. After study with Willson Young Stamper (1912–1988) at the Honolulu Museum of Art, Han moved to New York City and studied at the Art Students League of New York with Frank Mason (1921-2009) and Robert Beverly Hale (1901–1985). His work is in the permanent collections of The Honolulu Museum of Art, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (Utica, New York) and the Picker Art Gallery (Colgate College, Hamilton, New York), among others.  Han resides in Cooperstown, New York.

Lavern Kelley: The Art of the Farm
September 19 – December 31, 2015
Lavern Kelley was a dairy farmer who lived just a few miles south of Cooperstown on a small family farm kept up by him and his brother. He had taken up whittling as a young boy after an appendectomy, and continued to carve his entire life. His subject matter was all around him, and included not only farm vehicles like trucks, tractors, and plows, but also people, which he began to carve in response to the requests of his patrons.

This exhibition surveys a full range of works by Kelley in private and public collections – about 25 carvings plus numerous drawings and photographs.

“A Perfect Likeness”: Folk Portraits and Early Photography
The Jane Katcher Americana Series
October 10 – December 31, 2015
This exhibition will show how early photography contributed to the demise of folk portraiture in the 1840-50 period. Established painters were deeply affected by the invention of the daguerreotype and their reactions to this early photographic method varied. Some painters stopped painting and sought new occupations; others adapted their style to try to compete with the daguerreotype likenesses; yet others embraced the new technology and became daguerreotypists themselves. Their decisions were undoubtedly based partially on business concerns, stage of career, and the individual desire for artistic expression. Regardless of their responses, it became clear almost immediately that the American public would embrace this new technology, making painted portraits virtually obsolete, by creating what artists and daguerreans alike called “a perfect likeness.”