Anyone familiar with Doylestown and Bucks County, Pennsylvania could see how this beautiful landscape inspired artists to rush to their canvas and paints. Bucks County has long been known for its artistic tradition and the James A. Michener Art Museum, named for the Pulitzer Prize winning author and Doylestown native, is part of this heritage. The museum takes great pride in exhibiting the best artwork that Bucks County artists have to offer.
Throughout 2011 and into early 2012, the Michener Museum is exhibiting the works of 19th and 20th century Bucks County painters as well as holding an international exhibit featuring the art of quilt making.
‘The Painterly Voice: Bucks County’s Fertile Ground’
Bucks County provided inspiration and fertile ground for many painters throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. ‘The Painterly Voice: Bucks County’s Fertile Ground’ gives visitors to the museum a chance to view rarely seen paintings by renowned Bucks County artists such as Edward Hicks and Martin Johnson Heade. Many of the paintings on display have been drawn from the Philadelphia area’s most prestigious private and institutional collections for the exhibition.
Over 200 works of art by Bucks County’s best known and loved artists are displayed in the main gallery of the museum. Most paintings focus on the landscape tradition as embodied by the New Hope art colony and artists such as Redfield, Spencer and Garber. Garber’s 1915 painting of his daughter Tanis depicts the young girl in a spring garden saturated with light, poised at the door to the house. ‘Tanis’ is one of the highlights of the exhibition.
The paintings are arranged in rough chronological order so visitors can see the transition of traditional landscape art to the impressionist and more modern works of Charles Rosen and Daniel Garber. Many of the paintings, as to be expected, depict Bucks County covered in a blanket of snow. There are also nature scenes, town and village scenes, and depictions of events in Bucks County, such as Edward Redfield’s vivid portrayal of ‘The Burning of Center Bridge’, an event he witnessed from his home and immortalised in art.
Curators of the exhibition decided to forgo the more stuffy ‘curator-speak’ typical of most exhibitions and make the labels on the paintings more conversational, personal and friendly, as if they are just trying to talk to you as a tour guide would. This form of explanation lends the exhibition a more relaxed atmosphere.
‘The Painterly Voice: Bucks County’s Fertile Ground’ is a must for anyone interested in artistic traditions of Bucks County. It runs from 22 October 2011 to 1 April 2012.
‘Quilt Art: International Expressions’
Also at the James A. Michener Art Museum during December 2011 is an international exhibition of quilt art in the Fred Beans gallery. Quilt Art was founded in Britain in 1985 and seeks to push the boundaries of the quilt as an art form.
The exhibition brings together 40 quilts created by artists from nine countries, the UK, Belgium, Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Hungary, and the United States.
Visitors to the exhibition will see how the various artists approached the art of quilt making according to their diverse cultural backgrounds. The result is a collection of dynamic and colourful quilts, very unlike the type your grandmother used to make. Artists were inspired by personal and social issues to create their quilts, which range from the abstract to the sublime.
The Quilt Art exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum will inspire anyone interested in textiles and the textile arts. It runs until 31 December 2011.
About the James A. Michener Art Museum
The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 Pine Street, Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It is open Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 4.30 pm, Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday from 12 noon to 5 pm. Admission is free to members, £12.50 for adults, $11.50 for seniors, $6 for children between 6 and 18 and free to children under 6. College students with a valid ID can buy tickets for $9.50. Group tours are available.
More information about the museum can be found on its official website.
Beth MacMillan - Beth MacMillan fulfilled her dream of living and traveling in Europe when she, her husband and their two dogs moved to Denmark in 2001 for ...
