Back to News & PressArkansas Museum of Fine Arts Advance Schedule of Exhibitions Fall 2023 - Spring 2024
New Season of Exhibitions Highlighting Whitfield Lovell Among Internationally Celebrated Artists
The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA) unveils its upcoming exhibition schedule, presenting an array of artistic voices and media. Solo exhibitions of the artists Whitfield Lovell, Rhea Storr, Risa Hricovsky, and Lillian Schwartz will open, in addition to the exhibitions Path to Abstraction: Picasso, Braque, and Cubism’s Impact on Modern Art, Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s to 1970s, and the Delta Triennial. Fresh rotations of the AMFA Foundation Collection will also be on view, providing an opportunity to experience additional works from the permanent collection in a new context.
AMFA Executive Director Dr. Victoria Ramirez stated, “This schedule was carefully curated to serve as a counterpoint to the museum’s inaugural exhibitions. The exhibitions feature work by multiple contemporary artists who explore universal themes of memory, identity, migration, and the nature of perception. While different in their practices, these artists challenge the boundaries of artistic materials and processes, resulting in experiences that stimulate the senses. The exhibitions will transform and activate the galleries offering innovative ways to see and visit AMFA.”
Whitfield Lovell: Passages
Harriet and Warren Stephens Family Gallery
October 27, 2023 – January 14, 2024
Whitfield Lovell: Passages focuses on African American history and raises questions about identity, memory, and our country’s heritage. Lovell (b. 1959, Bronx, New York) makes drawings inspired by photographs of unidentified African Americans taken between the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Executed on paper or salvaged wooden boards, the artist’s drawings are paired with found objects and often incorporated into stand-alone tableaux or larger multimedia installations. In the immersive installation Deep River (2013), recordings of lapping water accompany floor-to-ceiling video projections of the Tennessee River. Visitation: The Richmond Project (2001)—inspired by an African American neighborhood in Virginia in the 1860s—is a domestic interior displayed in a room built inside the gallery. Passages examines the history and cultural memory of the African American experience and invites guests to consider the physical passage of time, its effect on memory, and the reception of our collective history.
Whitfield Lovell: Passages is organized by the American Federation of Arts in collaboration with Whitfield Lovell. Major support for the national tour and exhibition catalogue is provided by National Endowment for the Arts and the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Rhea Storr: A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message
Fine Arts Club New Media Gallery
August 29, 2023 – December 31, 2023
Rhea Storr, an artist of British and Bahamian heritage, examines her identity as a multiracial individual in her short film A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message. Storr (b. 1991, Leeds, England) intersperses contemporary and historical footage of the West Indian Carnival in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK, comparing the ways in which Afro-Caribbean and white people experience the festivities. She contrasts snippets of Black participants dancing and singing in brilliantly colored costumes adorned with feathers, sequins, and ribbons, with shots of white people observing on the sidelines. Storr herself is both an observer and a participant in the revelry—she appears in the video wearing a costume decorated with anchor and sun motifs, symbols of the Bahamas, yet she is also the artist behind the camera, observing and documenting the goings-on. Storr thinks of her camera as another eye—a way to understand what is happening around her. That camera is also a tool to help viewers understand her experience operating simultaneously in two worlds.
AMFA’s new media gallery is a space that has the potential to display audio-visual works designed for projectors, television monitors, speakers, and even interactive digital platforms, allowing AMFA’s programming to reflect the myriad ways artists work in the 21st century. The dedicated new media gallery is designed to present artworks created with technologies such as video, computer animation, and interactive digital art. These works are shown on a continuous loop and guests are invited to enter and exit the gallery as they wish.
Rhea Storr: A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message is presented by Becky and Rett Tucker in partnership with the Arkansas Cinema Society.
Path to Abstraction: Picasso, Braque, and Cubism’s Impact on Modern Art
Berta and John Baird Gallery
December 9, 2023 – April 14, 2024
The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts showcases two paintings by the creators of Cubism. On loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Pablo Picasso’s Fan, Salt Box, Melon (1909) and Georges Braque’s Guitar and Bottle of Marc on a Table (1930) are in intimate conversation with rarely seen gems from the AMFA Foundation Collection.
Between 1908 and 1914, Picasso and Braque made experimental chess moves against each other as they worked to undo traditional painting’s illusionistic “window on the world.” Cubism did not end there, however. It ushered in a geometric language that spread beyond France and inspired modern art movements around the world. Early examples in this exhibition from the AMFA Foundation’s celebrated drawings collection include line drawings by Spanish painter Juan Gris, who quickly adopted the Cubist style; a buoyant blue landscape by Jean Metzinger; Georges Valmier’s colorful collage; and a bold charcoal drawing by Jeanne Rij-Rousseau. Works by American artists Blanche Lazzell and Abraham Walkowitz lay bare their process for abstracting recognizable forms.
Path to Abstraction: Picasso, Braque, and Cubism’s Impact on Modern Art is organized by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Risa Hricovsky: Then Is Now
Robyn and John Horn Gallery
December 19, 2023 – April 28, 2024
Risa Hricovsky (born 1985, Toledo, OH) transforms the Robyn and John Horn Gallery with a site-specific sculpture and wall-painting installation combining joyful colors, abstract patterns, and materials that fool the eye. The artist creates her intricately patterned “shag rug” sculptures, from which her Fringe series derives its name, using colored porcelain. Associated with midcentury domestic décor, for Hricovsky these rugs also furtively evoke 1960s counterculture and the call for “peace, love and progressive change.” Rather than soft carpet, however, Hricovsky’s hard porcelain is a nod to how fossilized and unchanged many of those 1960s cultural issues turned out to be. At the same time, the artist’s radical transformation of the gallery suggests idealism is as relevant as ever.
Hricovsky’s practice aims to “push the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and between art, design, and craft,” making her a perfect complement to the AMFA Foundation Collection and a source of inspiration for the Museum’s Windgate Art School students.
Risa Hricovsky: Then Is Now is organized by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Lillian Schwartz: Pixillation
Fine Arts Club New Media Gallery
January 16, 2024 – May 5, 2024
Trained in painting, drawing, and sculpture, Lillian Schwartz (b. 1927, Cincinnati, Ohio) began creating digital art in the late 1960s after joining AT&T Bell Laboratories as one of its first resident artists. At Bell Labs, engineers, scientists, and artists collaborated on experiments with computer-generated music and visuals. To create Pixillation, Schwartz wrote lines of code to create a black and white texture, which she overlaid with hand-colored animation. The artist edited the film so the color of the digital and analog shapes contrast and match in varying frames, creating a shifting effect. The soundtrack, written and performed by Gershon Kingsley on a Moog synthesizer, increases in tempo as the film cuts from digital to analog imagery at a faster pace, building a sense of urgency. The saturated colors, complex rhythm, and geometric shapes of Pixillation, Schwartz’s film featuring digitally produced images, went on to define the look and feel of 1970s computer art.
AMFA’s new media gallery is a space that has the potential to display audio-visual works designed for projectors, television monitors, speakers, and even interactive digital platforms, allowing AMFA’s programming to reflect the myriad ways artists work in the 21st century. The dedicated new media gallery is designed to present artworks created with technologies such as video, computer animation, and interactive digital art. These works are shown on a continuous loop and guests are invited to enter and exit the gallery as they wish.
Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s to 1970s
Harriet and Warren Stephens Family Gallery
February 16, 2024 – May 12, 2024
Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s to 1970s is the first major traveling exhibition to analyze modern Native American art in relation to Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, and Hard-Edge Painting. Based on the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, where revolutionary approaches encouraged experimentation and risk taking, Action/Abstraction Redefined explores how IAIA’s artists combined New York School art influences with Native art traditions and challenged stereotypical expectations of American Indian art at midcentury.
Much has been made of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and other soon-to-be Abstract Expressionists in the mid-1940s making paintings inspired by Surrealism, Jungian analysis, ancient myths, and global arts and religions, including Native American imagery. This exhibition flips that script and expands the conversation to artists bringing their own visual culture and innovation to modern art movements.
Action/Abstraction Redefined is organized by IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM. Support for this exhibition is provided by Art Bridges.
Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s to 1970s is organized by Dr. Manuela Well-Off-Man, chief curator, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Tatiana Lomahaftewa-Singer, curator of collections, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and Dr. Lara Evans, IAIA Associate Professor of Native Art History.
Delta Triennial
Harriet and Warren Stephens Family Gallery
June 14, 2024 – August 25, 2024
For more than 60 years, the Delta exhibition has heightened the visibility of artists from or working in Arkansas and its surrounding states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. Founded as a juried exhibition, the Delta is named after the fertile floodplains surrounding the Mississippi River and seeks to amplify artistic voices in the Mid-South as they reflect complex histories and shifts in the cultural landscape.
In recent years, the Delta exhibition has evolved from its original form as an annual juried exhibition into a collaborative series, Delta Voices: Artists of the Mid-South—made in partnership with museums in the region. The Delta will continue to change in 2024, debuting at the new AMFA as a triennial exhibition—bringing new artists and voices to the historic exhibition.
Current Exhibitions
Sun Xun: Tears of Chiwen
April 22–August 13, 2023
Fine Arts Club New Media Gallery
Together.
April 22–September 10, 2023
Harriet and Warren Stephens Family Gallery
Drawn to Paper
April 22–November 26, 2023
Berta and John Baird Gallery
Chakaia Booker: Intentional Risks
April 22–December 3, 2023
Robyn and John Horn Gallery
Natasha Bowdoin: Spring Song
April 22, 2023–February 16, 2025
Art Perch
Anne Lindberg: passage
April 22, 2023–February 15, 2026
Corridor
Images are available in AMFA's press kit.
Image Captions
Rhea Storr (Leeds, England, 1991 - ), A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message, 2018, Super16 Film, colour, 5.1 surround, 11 mins., Courtesy of Rhea Storr and LUX, London.
Whitfield Lovell (New York, New York, 1959 - ), Kin I (Our Folks), 2008, conté on paper, paper flags, and string, 30 x 22 ½ in., On loan from the collection of Reginald and Aliya Browne.
Pablo Picasso (Málaga, Spain, 1881 - 1973, Mougins, France), Fan, Salt Box, Melon, 1909, oil on canvas, framed: 39 1/2 x 32 7 /8 x 2 7 /8 in., unframed: 32 x 25 1/4 in. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1969.22 © Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Risa Hricovsky (Toledo, Ohio, 1985 - ), Duality (Detail 3.5), 2023, colored porcelain, 48 x 48 x 4 in., Courtesy of the Artist.
Lillian Schwartz (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1927 - ), Still from Pixillation, 1970, motion picture, 4 mins. From the Collections of The Henry Ford.
Fritz Scholder (Mission/Luiseño, 1937 - 2005), New Mexico # 40, 1966, acrylic on canvas, 73 1/2 x 51 1/2 in., On loan from the MoCNA Collection, MS-41
Action/Abstraction Redefined is organized by IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Sante Fe, NM. Support for this exhibition is provided by Art Bridges.
Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s to 1970s is organized by Dr. Manuela Well-Off-Man, chief curator, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Tatiana Lomahaftewa-Singer, curator of collections, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and Dr. Lara Evans, IAIA Associate Professor of Native Art History.
About Art Bridges:
Art Bridges is the vision of philanthropist and arts patron Alice Walton. The mission of Art Bridges is to expand access to American art in all regions across the nation. Since 2017, Art Bridges has been creating and supporting programs that bring outstanding works of American art out of storage and into communities. Art Bridges partners with a growing network of nearly 220 museums of all sizes and locations to provide financial and strategic support for exhibition development, loans from the Art Bridges Collection, and programs designed to educate, inspire, and deepen engagement with local audiences. The Art Bridges Collection represents an expanding vision of American art from the 19th century to present day and encompasses multiple media and voices. For more information, visit www.artbridgesfoundation.org.