Miró, Joan, L’Antitete pair D-J, 1947, Etching and Engraving, Courtesy of Dolan/Maxwell.
The Academy Art Museum is opening two new exhibitions on April 16. Miró in New York, 1947: Miró, Hayter and Atelier 17 will be on display through July 8, 2021 in the galleries and August 1, 2021 online. Norma Morgan: Enchanted World will be on display in the galleries and online through August 1st, 2021.
Miró in New York, 1947: Miró, Hayter and Atelier 17 explores a group of little-known etchings Joan Miró made with influential British printmaker Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, the New York outpost of his seminal printmaking studio in Paris. Both Miró and Hayter were key participants in the community of artists in Paris who ultimately formed the core of international movements in contemporary art from the 1930s to 1945.
In the 1940s many of these artists, including Hayter, moved to New York to escape the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Paris. There, the confluence of these émigrés and the ingenious and energetic American artists who created Abstract Expressionism fueled the relocation of the center of the art world to New York. Works will be drawn from the Museum’s Permanent Collection and loans from Dolan/Maxwell Gallery, Philadelphia, and private collections. The exhibition catalogue includes the wide breadth of experimental and collaborative work done at Atelier 17, with pieces by Fred Becker, Terry Haass, Gabor Peterdi, Anne Ryan, Yves Tanguy, Helen Phillips, Alice Trumbull-Mason, and others, all of whom worked in Atelier 17 alongside Hayter and Miró.
Norma Morgan image credit: Norma Morgan, David in the Wilderness.
A lecture “Joan Miró, Stanley William Hayter and Atelier 17,” presented by Carla Esposito Hayter, will be held on Saturday, May 8 at 10 a.m. on Zoom. Esposito-Hayter is an art historian and the author of the Monotype: The History of a Pictorial Art, and Hayter et l’Atelier 17 (Hayter and Atelier 17, published in French and Italian), as well as the catalog essay for the exhibition at the Academy Art Museum. She is also the daughter-in-law of Atelier 17’s founder, Stanley William Hayter. In dialogue with Academy Art Museum’s Curator Mehves Lelic, Esposito-Hayter will talk about the rich history of the Atelier’s decades-long influence in printmaking, as well as share anecdotes, insights and family history, told through her close relationship with Hayter and Miró.
In July, the Museum presents a double bill of Miró Makes a Color Print and On and Around Miró by avant-garde filmmaker Tom Bouchard. Miró Makes a Color Print pictures Joan Miró as he works at Atelier 17 in New York on a print – the subject of Academy Art Museum’s Spring 2021 exhibition, Miró in New York, 1947. On and Around Miró is a more expansive record of the artist’s work and studio. The film screenings, which will be held on July 1 at 11 a.m. and July 2 at 7 p.m. are free.
Also opening on April 16 will be the exhibition, Norma Morgan: Enchanted World. This is an exhibition of the late artist’s prints, watercolors, paintings and drawings, and spans over 30 years of her prolific yet under-studied career. The exhibition highlights Morgan’s ability to convey a spiritual experience through her landscape and portraiture work and to effortlessly transition from formal observation to magical wonder. While her prints are a testimony to her mastery as a printmaker, her mid-career paintings, which include experimental materials such as Day-Glo acrylic, shine a light on the artist’s inquisitive mind and inventive inner world.
Morgan’s unique visual language invites the viewer to step back to take in the entirety of her layered compositions and to look closer and notice the figures hiding in them. One of the two African-American women artists to study with Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, Morgan was a trailblazer as an artist and printmaker. Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Library of Congress; the National Gallery of Art, and others. The Academy Art Museum is proud to present this exhibition with loans from the Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art, Mr. Donnell and Mrs. Dorothea Walker Collection of African American Art, Mr. Freddie Styles, Mr. Darryl Love, and Dolan/Maxwell. The exhibition catalog will feature essays by art historians Dr. Amalia Amaki and Dr. Christina Weyl.
The Academy Art Museum exhibitions are sponsored by the Talbot County Arts Council, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Star Democrat. The Museum is open daily, Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 12 noon to 4 p.m. For additional information, visit academyartmuseum.org or call the Museum at 410-822-2787.
The Avalon Foundation announces the 2021 official opening of its brand new outdoor music venue, The Avalon’s Stoltz Pavilion. Conceived and constructed in 2020 as a means to keep music going amidst pandemic restrictions, the organization is very excited to program the space over the course of an entire spring, summer and fall. “We are going to program predominantly for the outdoors until the world gets back closer to normal,” said Suzy Moore, Artistic Director at The Avalon.
The Stoltz Pavilion was built from the ground up to ensure that audiences, staff, volunteers, and performers can enjoy live music, while substantially mitigating health risks. But it was also a way to offer musicians a chance to play and make a living again. Putting the hard-hit professional musicians back to work gives audiences a reminder that normal life is on the horizon. While Covid safety measures will stay in place in the immediate future, the Avalon will roll with the changes as the situation continues to evolve. “Yes we must still be safe. And we will abide by that rule first,” said Jess Bellis CFO and COO at The Avalon. “Safety has been at the forefront of our minds ever since our industry vanished into thin air and we were left to reinvent ourselves in 2020. Safety was the reason we came up with putting up an outdoor venue when everything else was shutting down. Keith Stoltz and The Stoltz family made it happen.”
Statistics show that more people are going to head out to a concert this year than ever before. Gene Simmons of KISS offers this advice when doing so. “Rock is dead. Not because the talent isn’t there, but because the business model just doesn’t work. And so that leaves live performances. And I really hope once this vaccine takes hold that people go out to the local clubs and see all the new bands and support new bands. Like a baby that’s on the floor, go up there, pick that baby up and coddle it, give it love, because those new bands need your love. It’s not going to affect me. I make a living, but the new bands need the love and attention. Don’t just go see Metallica and Taylor Swift or KISS. On the weekends, go to a place that’s got live music. You need to support the new generation of talented people who are musicians and writers and so on. Don’t let the robots take away everything.’”
