Latin America is generally understood as the North, Central, and South American and Caribbean nations where languages derived from Latin, such as Spanish, Portuguese and French, are predominantly spoken. This concept reflects the shared colonial heritage of this region.
The modern Republic of Haiti is located on Hispaniola, the most populous island in the Caribbean Sea. This land was home to indigenous peoples long before seafaring European explorers began crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Here and throughout Latin America, Pre-Columbian civilizations had developed sophisticated culture for millennia.
In the late-15th and early-16th centuries, Europeans arrived seeking new land and trading opportunities. For the next 300 years, Spanish, Portuguese, and French interests colonized large parts of the Western Hemisphere and imposed European artistic conventions onto existing traditions. Millions of native inhabitants in Latin America were conquered or killed during this territorial expansion, succumbed to newly introduced diseases, or were brutally subjugated in the pursuit of natural resources. As this human toll inevitably dwindled the indigenous workforce, colonial powers satisfied the demand for free labor by forcibly importing millions of enslaved Africans to participate in military expeditions and work in the fields and mines. The men and women of this diaspora introduced their own unique visual language and contributed African cultural elements to the New World.
A revolutionary fire swept the region during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, stoked in part by the American and French Revolutions, and the people of Latin America began fighting for independence from colonial rule. The Haitian Revolution, led by enslaved people and free people of color, saw France’s wealthiest colony, Saint Domingue, force the abolition of slavery and become the world’s first Black-led republic in 1804. This reverberated throughout the Americas. While many Latin American nations were decolonized within those first tumultuous decades of the 19th century, others did not gain independence until the 20th century, and some remain non-sovereign territories. Though much of post-colonial Latin America has often been defined by inequality, internal strife, and foreign intervention, hope persists.
In the late 1940s, Winslow Anderson, the first full-time glass designer at Blenko Glass Company in Milton, West Virginia, began traveling into the swirling currents of this complex history. Anderson was moved by the colorful, joyous, and expressive nature of Haitian art, and from 1948 until about 1989, he made annual trips to the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince. There he developed a lifelong friendship with DeWitt Peters, who had helped establish Le Centre d’Art, which is now among the oldest surviving cultural institutions in the Caribbean.
Anderson was a discerning collector. During these trips, he purchased many Haitian artworks, considering each an inspiration to his own creative spirit. Upon his passing in 2007, the Museum received a bequest of 160 works of Haitian art and a generous endowment that primarily supports the expansion and conservation of this important Haitian art collection.
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.
Latin America is generally understood as the North, Central, and South American and Caribbean nations where languages derived from Latin, such as Spanish, Portuguese and French, are predominantly spoken. This concept reflects the shared colonial heritage of this region.
The modern Republic of Haiti is located on Hispaniola, the most populous island in the Caribbean Sea. This land was home to indigenous peoples long before seafaring European explorers began crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Here and throughout Latin America, Pre-Columbian civilizations had developed sophisticated culture for millennia.
In the late-15th and early-16th centuries, Europeans arrived seeking new land and trading opportunities. For the next 300 years, Spanish, Portuguese, and French interests colonized large parts of the Western Hemisphere and imposed European artistic conventions onto existing traditions. Millions of native inhabitants in Latin America were conquered or killed during this territorial expansion, succumbed to newly introduced diseases, or were brutally subjugated in the pursuit of natural resources. As this human toll inevitably dwindled the indigenous workforce, colonial powers satisfied the demand for free labor by forcibly importing millions of enslaved Africans to participate in military expeditions and work in the fields and mines. The men and women of this diaspora introduced their own unique visual language and contributed African cultural elements to the New World.
A revolutionary fire swept the region during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, stoked in part by the American and French Revolutions, and the people of Latin America began fighting for independence from colonial rule. The Haitian Revolution, led by enslaved people and free people of color, saw France’s wealthiest colony, Saint Domingue, force the abolition of slavery and become the world’s first Black-led republic in 1804. This reverberated throughout the Americas. While many Latin American nations were decolonized within those first tumultuous decades of the 19th century, others did not gain independence until the 20th century, and some remain non-sovereign territories. Though much of post-colonial Latin America has often been defined by inequality, internal strife, and foreign intervention, hope persists.
In the late 1940s, Winslow Anderson, the first full-time glass designer at Blenko Glass Company in Milton, West Virginia, began traveling into the swirling currents of this complex history. Anderson was moved by the colorful, joyous, and expressive nature of Haitian art, and from 1948 until about 1989, he made annual trips to the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince. There he developed a lifelong friendship with DeWitt Peters, who had helped establish Le Centre d’Art, which is now among the oldest surviving cultural institutions in the Caribbean.
Anderson was a discerning collector. During these trips, he purchased many Haitian artworks, considering each an inspiration to his own creative spirit. Upon his passing in 2007, the Museum received a bequest of 160 works of Haitian art and a generous endowment that primarily supports the expansion and conservation of this important Haitian art collection.
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.
The Daywood Collection comprises 343 exceptional works of American and European art, including masterpieces by renowned artists such as Frank Weston Benson, Emil Carlsen, Frederick Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, John Henry Twachtman, Andrew Wyeth, and many others.
This wide-ranging collection of prints, paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts is the remarkable legacy of Arthur Spencer Dayton (1887-1948) and Ruth Woods Dayton (1894-1978). The couple, originally from Philippi, West Virginia, became prominent community leaders in Charleston, West Virginia. Between 1916 and 1965, the Daytons developed an astounding art collection. They were students of art history, primarily interested in academically trained artists from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century who worked in the various schools of Realism and Impressionism. They were deeply committed to improving the quality of life for the citizens of this state. Following the death of Arthur Dayton in 1948, Ruth Dayton established a non-profit gallery in Lewisburg, West Virginia, called The Daywood Gallery, a combination of Arthur’s surname, Dayton, and her maiden name, Woods. The collection was displayed there until, ultimately, Ruth Dayton entrusted it to the Huntington Museum of Art in 1967.
In nature, an evergreen is a plant that retains its green leaves throughout the year, which nicely relates to The Daywood Collection and its many vibrant landscape paintings. But the word evergreen also represents a natural evolution in the way the Museum exhibits this perennially popular collection. Beginning with Evergreen: Treasures from The Daywood Collection, selections from The Daywood Collection will be presented in the galleries year-round, on a rotating basis, making some of the Museum’s finest objects more available to visitors.
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.
Karen Drewes Seibert, granddaughter of Bauhaus artist Werner Drewes, will present The Dr. Lawrence B. & Shirley Gang Memorial Lecture on Sunday, June 29, 2025, at 2 p.m. She will speak about her grandfather’s work. A reception follows. Admission is free.
Acclaimed artist and teacher Werner Drewes (American, 1899-1985), born in Canig, Germany, profoundly influenced the development of abstract art in 20th-century America.
From 1921-1922 and 1927-1928, Werner Drewes studied at the Bauhaus, the innovative German art school founded by architect Walter Gropius, who later designed the Huntington Museum of Art’s 1968 addition and studios. Drewes, who had served on the frontlines in the German military during World War I, recognized the growing threat of Nazi fascism. Like many modernists in Germany, he immigrated to the United States with his wife and children, in 1930, before the onset of World War II.
Drewes was a founder of the American Abstract Artists group, and he also became associated with the avant-garde printmaking group Atelier 17. Everywhere he went, he introduced the concepts and methods he learned from instructors at the Bauhaus, such as Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, and Lyonel Feininger. Drewes refined and shared his ideas throughout a long, successful career as an artist and an inspirational teacher, particularly at Washington University in St. Louis from 1946-1965.
Though he returned to Europe at times, Drewes embraced his U.S. citizenship and believed strongly in American democracy and independence. The son of a Lutheran minister and a lifelong student of the natural sciences, he also believed that art offered a unique path to better understand humanity’s place within a large, mysterious world. Drewes was thoughtful, inquisitive, and energetic. He shifted easily from figurative art to expressionist abstraction and non-objective compositions, but he always sought to capture something essential and exciting about his subject. Drewes was a master printmaker, especially skillful and prolific in woodcut printing, a relief printmaking process. Until the end, he carved the multiple woodblocks that comprise his color woodcuts and rubbed his prints by hand.
This exhibit of Werner Drewes’s work is organized in partnership with Karen Drewes Seibert, the youngest granddaughter of the artist and curator of Drewes Fine Art. It features woodcuts and paintings generously loaned by Seibert from the Werner Drewes Estate, along with works from the Museum’s permanent collection, including some splendid gifts from Seibert.
This program is presented by the Richard C. von Hess Foundation.
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.
Screen printing originated in China during the Song dynasty (960-1279) as a means of transferring designs onto fabric. This technology diffused into neighboring Asian countries, such as Japan, where it further developed. In time, screen printing techniques spread far and wide on the cross-cultural currents that connected East Asia to Europe and beyond, though the Western world did not widely adopt screen printing until the 20th century.
To make a screen print, ink is forced through a mesh screen and onto a surface. Certain areas of the screen, which was traditionally made of silk, are made impervious to ink using a variety of methods. This creates a stencil. Ink is allowed to pass through the unblocked areas of the stencil and onto the surface, forming the printed image.
Many modern and contemporary artists have embraced the versatility of screen printing to create visually striking and technically complex images. Stenciled features exciting screen prints from the Museum’s permanent collection, including works by 20th century icons who popularized this art form, such as Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, and others, such as West Virginia native Don Pendleton, who continue pushing and pulling the medium in new directions.
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.
The “Art on a Limb” exhibit of artist-decorated trees featuring ornaments created by local artisans will be on view at the Huntington Museum of Art from November 26, 2024, through January 5, 2025. One of the highlights of the “Art on a Limb” exhibit includes the Palette Tree in HMA’s Virginia Van Zandt Great Hall. This tree features hand-painted palettes by local and regional artists.
This exhibit is presented with support from the City of Huntington Mayor’s Council for the Arts.
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.