An Intern’s Perspective: On Parade by Louis Stone

November 30th, 2011
Louis Stone, On Parade, n.d., oil on canvas, H.40,25 x W.60 inches. James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of Janet L. and Lawrence C. Stone.

Louis Stone, On Parade, n.d., oil on canvas, H.40,25 x W.60 inches. James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of Janet L. and Lawrence C. Stone.

It’s hard to believe that we are already at the end of November, and I am embarrassed to say that we were delayed in revealing September’s Mystery Image. This image is a section of a larger painting entitled, On Parade by Louis Stone. I asked our Education Intern, a student from the University of Pennsylvania, to write about this work. Thanks Ali for taking the time to look closer at On Parade! – Adrienne N. Romano, Director of Education and New Media

What do you see in this work? I spy a cupcake. I spy a pair of blue eyes and two Groucho Marx eyebrows. I spy a smile, a swooping arm and a mitten-hand. No one sees the same thing and that is what makes it fun to look at a work like this! Read More »

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The Industrial Landscapes of Charles Rosen

November 10th, 2011
Charles Rosen (1878-1950), The Roundhouse, Kingston, New York, 1927, oil on canvas, H. 30.125 x W. 40.25 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of the John P. Horton Estate.

Charles Rosen (1878-1950), The Roundhouse, Kingston, New York, 1927, oil on canvas, H. 30.125 x W. 40.25 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of the John P. Horton Estate.

For those of you who were stumped on October’s mystery image, it is the painting The Roundhouse, Kingston, New York by Charles Rosen.

At first glance, this work is an industrial scene set in Kingston, New York. Among the other buildings shown in the painting, a roundhouse sits in the foreground, which was a building used for servicing locomotives. They were built as early as the 1830s and few remain today.

In looking closer, this work really isn’t about the subject matter; it’s about the interplay of forms and lines.  With the use of vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, Rosen is creating movement between the forms. The composition is balanced, all the while giving us a slightly awkward perspective of the scene below. The combination of these forms and lines creates a painting alive with order and rhythm. Read More »

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Alan Goldstein: Merging Architecture with Nature

July 18th, 2011

Alan Goldstein, b. 1938, Upriver from Lumberville: Walking Bridge II, 1984, oil on canvas, James A. Michener Art Museum, purchased with funds provided by Anne and Joseph Gardocki.

Alan Goldstein, b. 1938, Upriver from Lumberville: Walking Bridge II, 1984, oil on canvas, James A. Michener Art Museum, purchased with funds provided by Anne and Joseph Gardocki.

Alan Goldstein is an abstract painter who works predominantly with paint, ink and mixed media. He has experimented with diverse media, including tar, rope, steel, and fabric.

Goldstein started his formal schooling by studying architecture, the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings. Do you see anything in Upriver from Lumberville that reminds you of architecture?

Architecture continues to inspire the things Goldstein includes in his work. After looking at this painting, look at some photographs taken of local Bucks County buildings. Better yet, travel around the county. Do you see any elements in the buildings that look like they could be part of Goldstein’s painting?

In addition, the natural beauty of Bucks County inspires Goldstein. He enjoys traveling around the countryside finding views of hills, rivers, stonewalls, meadows and forests that interest him. Sometimes he sketches his ideas, sometimes he photographs them, and sometimes he simply remembers the images for a future work of art. When Goldstein photographs his work, he often combines different photographs in a collage.  He then uses the collage as a basis for his paintings, a technique used in Upriver from Lumberville. He finds patterns in the repetition of roads, rivers and trees. His colors come from nature, though like any artist he changes the colors in order to have a successful composition. Look carefully at Upriver from Lumberville.  What in nature can you find in this painting? How is this painting a landscape? Read More »

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Director’s Spotlight: Michener’s Earliest Acquisitions

June 9th, 2011
William B. T. Trego (1828-1909), Battery, Forward! (also known as Bringing Up the Battery, Artillery to the Front, Civil War Battle Scene), 1887, oil on canvas, H. 19.25 x W. 29.5 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Museum purchase funded by Anne and Joseph Gardocki.

William B. T. Trego (1828-1909), Battery, Forward! (also known as Bringing Up the Battery, Artillery to the Front, Civil War Battle Scene), 1887, oil on canvas, H. 19.25 x W. 29.5 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Museum purchase funded by Anne and Joseph Gardocki.

The practice of museum directors spending their time in galleries and artists studios with fat institutional checkbooks to purchase artwork has long ago vanished. While there may be a small handful of very select institutions (The Crystal Bridges Museum is one example) with substantial acquisition funds, the current atmosphere is in sharp contrast to the early part of the twentieth century when directors from both large and small art museums would spend much of their time buying art.

Although a rare opportunity, I have always found the experience one of the most rewarding and interesting parts of my job at the Michener Art Museum. One of my earliest introductions to the pleasure of playing collector with institutional funds occurred in 1994 when the morning mail included a letter dated February 25, 1994 from a respectable gallery of American Art located in Connecticut. The gallery was given my name by a close friend, Peter Blume, who was at the time Director of the Allentown Art Museum. The gallery was offering a history painting by William T. Trego (shown above). Peter had been offered the painting which was not right for Allentown but he thought we might like the work. At the time I knew very little about Trego’s work but I found the picture of great interest. Read More »

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Director’s Spotlight: Discovering the Michener’s First Fake

May 11th, 2011
(Attributed to) Franz Kline (1910-1962), Untitled, n.d., oil on canvas, H. 58 x W. 68 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of Mari and James A. Michener.

(Attributed to) Franz Kline (1910-1962), Untitled, n.d., oil on canvas, H. 58 x W. 68 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of Mari and James A. Michener.

When I first arrived at the Michener in 1989, the museum’s collection was virtually non-existent. The collection held fewer than 50 objects and most were not high quality. The only paintings of note were a small group of Abstract Expressionist canvases which Jim Michener had left in his Bucks County home. In the 1960s, Jim Michener had built an excellent collection of American paintings, the bulk of which had been given to the University of Texas at Austin. Among the works that had been left in Jim’s Pipersville home were paintings by Karl Knaths, Grace Hartigan, Kyle Morris, Helen Frankenthaler and the prized object, a large (58 x 68) untitled canvas by Franz Kline. Kline, who died in 1961 at the age of 51, was a giant of the New York School who, along with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, came to symbolize the power and vitality of postwar American Abstract Expressionism. Read More »

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