The Huntington Museum of Art will present The Visual Elements: Pattern & Texture, which is the concluding exhibit in a two-year series focusing on the basic building blocks of art, from April 6 through July 21, 2024.

Drawing inspiration from the vision of famed architect Walter Gropius, The Visual Elements series has cultivated creativity and a greater understanding of artistic expression with six consecutive exhibitions that explore the foundational building blocks of artmaking. Using the Museum’s permanent collection, each exhibition thematically emphasized a certain shared aspect of the art on display. Yet artworks are, most often, arrangements of multiple elements. Each interrelated exhibition also demonstrated how the visual elements build on one another.

This series began with one of the simplest and most versatile elements in any artist’s toolbox: line. Subsequent exhibits investigated shape & form, value, color, and space. Now, we examine pattern and texture. Pattern recognition describes a cognitive process that matches information received from a stimulus in the environment with that retrieved from memory. It is a fundamental function of the brain, one that is innate to creating and experiencing art. Texture is the feel or appearance of a surface. These qualities may be tactile and perceived by our sense of touch or implied through the artist’s ability to skillfully manipulate their media.

This exhibit is presented with support from the City of Huntington Mayor’s Council for the Arts.

This exhibit is presented with support from The Isabelle Gwynn and Robert Daine Exhibition Endowment.

This program is presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.