Upcoming

Doodle 4 Google ™ WV Finalists Exhibition

May 22 - June 26, 2012
Virginia Van Zandt Great Hall

Opening Reception begins at 7 p.m. May 22, 2012. Admission is free.

The 10 West Virginia Finalists in the Doodle 4 Google ™ competition will be on display at the Huntington Museum of Art during this exciting exhibit. Admission to HMA will be free throughout the run of this exhibit.

Fine Arf!

May 26 - July 22, 2012
Bridge Gallery

To help celebrate Huntington’s win over 15 other cities vying for the $100,000 Pet Safe “Bark for Your Park Contest,” the Huntington Museum of Art will present an exhibition featuring images of dogs from the permanent collection.

The works on exhibit span five centuries, from the 16th through the 20th centuries, and portray the relationships between humans and their canine companions. Visitors will be able to view many different types of dogs rendered in a variety of media including oil paintings, watercolors, sculptures, prints, and decorative art objects. Each image will be accompanied by a famous quote about dogs.

This exhibit is sponsored by the Isabelle Gwynn and Robert Daine Exhibition Endowment, West Virginia Division of Culture and History, and West Virginia Commission on the Arts.

American Impressionism

The first group exhibit of works by the French Impressionists took place in Paris, France, in 1874. Ironically, few of the American artists who later became known as American Impressionists took much notice of these exhibits while studying art in Paris. It seems hard to believe that this now famous group of artists which includes Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Gustave Caillebotte exhibited together only eight times, until 1886, but their painting style had a marked influence on artists around the world – and on the history of art.

Many young American artists traveled to Paris in the 1870s and 1880s, then the art capital of the world, to round out their American academic art studies, the majority at the Académie Julian.

The first American Impressionist canvases painted in the United States by repatriated artists occurred in the late 1880s (with the exception of ex-patriot artists John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt who were creating impressionist paintings earlier), following a flurry of U.S. exhibits of French Impressionist works, and the interest of a number of prominent American collectors in acquiring works by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Manet, Sisley and others – thus validating the style in America. 

American impressionist painters often combined academic training with the more radical impressionist techniques, selecting and focusing on one or more of the tenets of impressionism such as incorporating a broken brush work, prismatic light, atmospheric and/or climate effects on an object, observing, sketching and painting out-of-doors (en plein air), or the depiction of modern subject matter – especially leisure-time activities.

The permanent collection of the Huntington Museum of Art holds a treasure trove of American Impressionist paintings. This exhibition will present these important and popular works painted by many of the best-known American impressionists including Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, Willard L. Metcalf, John H. Twachtman, John Singer Sargent, Frank Benson, Edward Willis Redfield, W. Elmer Schofield, Arthur Meltzer, and many others.

This exhibit is sponsored by The Katherine and Herman Pugh Exhibition Endowment, West Virginia Division of Culture and History, and the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.

Visiting Inspiration: Twenty Years of Gropius Artists

Opening reception takes place on June 16, 2012, with a 6 p.m. Public Presentation by Walter Gropius Master Artist Judy Pfaff followed by a reception. Admission to the opening reception is free.

Since 1992, the Huntington Museum has been the home to a brilliant and generous program which has enabled staff to select and bring a wide range of practicing artists known both nationally and internationally to Huntington. While here, each artist presents a hands-on or demonstration workshop available especially to artists of the Tri-State region. The workshops are accompanied by an eight-week exhibition of the artist’s work and a public lecture. In the past 20 years, 99 artists have visited the Museum, providing artists of this region the opportunity for observation, experimentation, constructive criticism,  and comradeship with other artists.

The Walter Gropius Master Artist Series is funded through the generosity of the Estate of Roxanna Y. Booth, a Huntington native, who wished to assist in the development of an art education program in accordance with the proposals of Walter Gropius, who designed the Museum’s Gropius Addition, as well at the Gropius Studios constructed in 1970. Alex E. Booth, Jr., Roxanna’s son, has advised and participated in the concept development of this series.

Roughly 10 years ago, a decision was made by the Museum to acquire a representative work by each of the visiting Gropius artists, when possible. This exhibition presents works that have been acquired to date and celebrates 20 years of the Walter Gropius Master Artist Series. Works on view represent a variety of media and show the breadth of the workshops offered. In the past two decades, workshops have focused on ceramics, photography, painting, pastel, printmaking, hand-made paper, glass, textiles, fiber, mixed-media and large-scale indoor and outdoor installations.  The Museum continues to bring approximately six artists to Huntington each year and will continue to acquire representative works by these inspirational visiting artists.

This exhibit is sponsored by The Herald-Dispatch, the Isabelle Gwynn and Robert Daine Exhibition Endowment, West Virginia Division of Culture and History, and West Virginia Commission on the Arts.

The Collection of Alex E. Booth, Jr.

Opening reception takes place on June 16, 2012, with a 6 p.m. Public Presentation by Walter Gropius Master Artist Judy Pfaff followed by a reception. Admission to the opening reception is free.

The Collection of Alex E. Booth, Jr. is striking in its breadth and variety, and comprises some of the most significant works in the Huntington Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Since 1964, and throughout his many years of involvement with the Huntington Museum of Art, Alex E. Booth, Jr. has made many generous gifts to this Museum, expanding its holdings in many areas.

Mr. Booth’s art interests are wide ranging, from important American paintings by Samuel Finley Breese Morse, John Singer Sargent, and Edward Potthast; American abstract sculpture from the 1950s and 1960s, including a Harry Bertoia sound sculpture titled Wheat Field; a still life pastel by Georges Braque; a beautiful and important sketch by George Bellows titled Counted Out; important abstract expressionist works by Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, as well as works that reflect his world travels.

Alex E. Booth, Jr. headed the Museum’s board from 1971 to 1973 and chaired the Buildings Committee at the time of the 1970 Gropius addition. It was this Committee that selected the Architect’s Collaborative, headed by Walter Gropius, to design the Museum’s additional galleries and studios.  It is fitting that this collection is displayed concurrently and alongside works by artists who have visited the Museum as part of the Walter Gropius Master Artist Series, as that program has been partly conceived by Mr. Booth, and is funded through the generosity of the Estate of his Mother, Roxanna Y. Booth.

In addition to the objects on display in the Daywood Gallery, visitors can find numerous sculptures from the Booth Collection on permanent display in the Museum’s Virginia Cavendish Sculpture Courtyard and throughout the Museum grounds.

This exhibit is sponsored by The Herald-Dispatch, the Isabelle Gwynn and Robert Daine Exhibition Endowment, West Virginia Division of Culture and History, and West Virginia Commission on the Arts.