Ilse Getz
American, born Germany, 1917–1992
N.Y. VII, 1972
Acrylic on canvas
Gift of the Artist in Memory of David Getz, 1975. (1975.162.3)
Aliza Nisenbaum
American, born Mexico, 1977
15 Minutes to Curtain, Soprano Angel
Blue (MET Traviata), 2023
Oil on linen
Partial gift of Eric Emmanuel with additional funding provided by The Estelle Reninger Fund, 2024. (2024.7)
This painting is one of three diva portraits that Aliza Nisenbaum created of the sopranos in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2023 rendition of La Traviata. In this project, she was interested in the stars behind the opera’s glamorous production. Here, one of the lead performers, Angel Blue, stands in her dressing room beside her sheet music and piano complete in her makeup and costume. Nisenbaum’s use of shimmering gold and silver, pastel colors, and decorative patterns create a fairytale atmosphere, emphasizing the magical quality of stage production. Her emphasis on Blue behind-the-scenes underscores the creative labor that often goes unseen in theater and opera.
George Segal
American, 1924–2000
Girl on a Chair, 1970
Plaster, wood and polyurethane paint, edition: 150
Published by Editions Alecto Ltd., London, England
Gift of Mr. Richard Roth, 1978. (1978.48)
Rigo Peralta
American, born Dominican Republic, 1970
Doña Negra, 2016
Acrylic on linen
Purchase: The Ardath Rodale Art Acquisition Fund, 2019. (2019.7)
This portrait of the artist’s grandmother upends the expected formality of the format and brings its sitter to vibrant life. Analuisa Torres-Peralta was affectionately known as La Negra for her dark skin. In this painting, Doña Negra—at age 94—smokes an Exactus Maduro cigar, made in the Dominican Republic where both she and her grandson were born. The cigar recalls the long history of tobacco growing in the Dominican Republic. It suggests the country’s role in the global economy and references the Indigenous Taino people who cultivated tobacco in the Caribbean islands. The portrait also evokes fond and important memories for the Allentown-based artist, who has said, “It represented an almost sacred ritual to be able to smoke a Dominican cigar with my grandmother.”
Nelson Shanks
American, 1937–2015
Nancy, 1974
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Franklin D. Crawford, Princeton, New Jersey, 1975. (1975.147)
The founder of a school for realist art in Philadelphia, Nelson Shanks is known for his presidential portraits, including those of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and his portraits of influential women, such as the first four female justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Here Shanks lends gravitas to a more personal depiction of an individual woman.
Chris Martin
American painter, born 1954
Like Seven Inches from the Noonday Sun, 2013
Oil on canvas
Gift of the Weissman Family Collection, 2023. (2023.26)
Lee Krasner
American, 1908–1984
Primary Series: Blue Stone, 1969
Primary Series: Pink or Rose Stone, 1969
Primary Series: Gold Stone, 1969
Lithographs, edition: 100
Printer: Mourlot Graphics, Ltd., New York, NY
Publisher: Marlborough Graphics Gallery, New York, NY
Gift of Robert Haggerty, 1979. (1979.47.1-3)
Bold yet delicate, Krasner’s Primary Series explores the tonal and textural possibilities of working with a single color of ink. Krasner drew directly on the stones used to print these lithographs, recalling, “I got very excited about it on the basis of some accidents that occurred while I was in the shop during the printing. I used these accidents…”
At the time she made these prints, Krasner was just beginning to receive recognition for her contributions to American art. Long overshadowed by the reputation of her husband, Jackson Pollock, Krasner was an accomplished artist in her own right who used abstraction to explore spiritual and psychological themes.
Danielle Riede
American, born 1976
Love in Orange, 2022
Oil with textured gesso on canvas
Gift of Danielle Riede, Courtesy Garvey|Simon NYC, 2023.
(2023.18.2)
Riede lends her experience as a lifelong dancer to her painting, translating movement into gesture on her abstract canvases. Beginning with an intuitive movement off the canvas, such as the arc of an arm, she then records that same movement in paint. She is also inspired by nature’s motion: lava flowing, ocean waves rippling, rays of sunlight streaming.
Riede has developed a special technique to build up texture in works like this one, applying layers of gesso made from calcium carbonate, a material found in eggshells, limestone, and chalk, that behaves much like plaster. The result suggests tidal motion beneath the surface.
Sam Gilliam
American, 1933–2022
Element, 2008
Acrylic on birch
Gift of Sam Gilliam, 2018. (2018.8)
Sam Gilliam emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid-1960s to become one of the great innovators of abstract painting. This painting is part of a group of works that Gilliam called “constructed surprises.” He made these paintings by pouring and mixing paint on birch plywood, then cutting apart the boards and reassembling them. This process is related to the revolutionary painting method Gilliam developed in the late 1960s with his so-called Drape paintings, which involved pouring paint onto unstretched canvas and then hanging the canvas as a three dimensional artwork.
Robert Motherwell
American, 1915–1991
Wall with Graffiti, 1950
Oil and charcoal on linen
Purchase: Gift of Estelle Reninger and Gift of The Dedalus Foundation, 1994. (1994.24)
Robert Motherwell started his paintings with something he called automatic drawing—random marks on the canvas meant to capture the subconscious. He painted Wall with Graffiti when he was completing a mural at a synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey. Although this painting is abstract, some elements suggest Old Testament references: for instance, the long white stroke at the left, covered with horizontal black marks, brings to mind Jacob’s Ladder, stretching from earth to heaven, and the Diaspora is indicated by a scribbled line drawing which suggests the wandering paths of the scattered tribes.
Alteronce Gumby
American, born 1985
Freedom Only Known to Them in
Whispers and Tales, 2022
Gemstones, willemite, calcite, glass and acrylic on panel
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 2023. (2023.1)
For this work, Alteronce Gumby assembled glass, minerals, and other unconventional materials into mosaic-like arrangements to evoke swirling galaxies and distant nebulae, a nod to the artist’s lifelong fascination with the cosmos and its infinite possibilities. The minerals used here—green willemite and red calcite—are fluorescent and glow when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) rays.
In only being observable under ultraviolet light—and otherwise undetectable by the human eye—these fluorescing minerals also become an apt metaphor for Gumby’s larger practice, which addresses issues of visibility and invisibility, and aims to challenge our assumptions about color by inviting us to think more expansively about it.
Rashaad Newsome (American, b. 1979), still from Untitled, 2008, silent single-channel video, 8 minutes, 7 seconds. Courtesy of Rashaad Newsome Studio
Against a spare, unadorned backdrop, a lone dancer—Shayne Oliver—freestyles for the camera, his body cycling through the dips, spins, and hand performance of vogue, a dance form born in the ballroom culture of Harlem’s queer Black and Latino communities. In 1970s and 1980s New York City, queer ballroom culture innovated vogue as a form of dance, carving out a space for LGBTQ people of color to find community and to foster a sense of belonging, safety, and support.
Newsome, himself a member and documentarian of that scene, did not simply record Oliver’s improvisation. He filmed it, cut the footage into a new sequence of gestures, and then had Oliver relearn and reperform that invented choreography for the camera—a process the artist compares to drawing, with the dancer’s body standing in for his pen. The result is less documentary than a composition built from movement itself.
Stripped of music and staged in a bare, almost clinical space, Untitled removes vogue from the noise, crowd, and competition of the ballroom floor. What remains is the dance alone—its rhythm, its precision, its formal beauty—offered up for sustained looking. In isolating the form this way, Newsome makes an argument as much as an image: that vogue, long marginalized and dismissed as street or vernacular performance, belongs fully within the histories of dance, cinema, and fine art. The silence sharpens the invitation, asking the viewer to supply the beat, and with it, a kind of intimacy with a dancer moving, seemingly, for no one and everyone at once.
Far left:
Artist once known
Guna; The Guna Yala (San Blas Islands, Panama)
Blouse with Mola, 1970s–1980s
Near left:
Artist once known
Guna; The Guna Yala (San Blas Islands, Panama)
Blouse with Mola, 1970s–1980s
Cotton and polyester, appliqué, reverse appliqué
Collection of Al and Eadie Shanker, 2019. (2019.27.57 and 62)
Guna women make vibrant textiles, called molas, to use as the front and back panels of a traditional blouse, as seen here. The Guna have developed a distinct artistic style that prioritizes bright colors, all-over pattern, and precise cutting and sewing.
In 1918, Panama’s government tried to bring the Guna under their control and outlawed important customs such as wearing molas. The Guna revolted and kept their sovereignty, and today, molas remain a key source of identity and pride in Guna communities.
Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz
American, born 1930
Converging Yellow Green, 1980
Acrylic on canvas
Gift of Dr. Jacob Bornstein, 1983. (1983.58)
The lines in this painting look like they are vibrating: this is because the painting’s dense stripes and contrast force your eyes to make constant tiny movements that bring different areas in and out of focus. Richard Anuszkiewicz was one of the founders of Op Art, a movement in which artists deliberately created optical illusions in their work. Many of his paintings use intense color and nesting shapes to play with viewers’ perception, creating art that is more about the experience of seeing than the painting itself.
Jésus Rafael Soto
Venezuelan, 1923–2005
Multiple II from Jai-Alai, 1969
Plexiglas, wood, metal, nylon string, edition: 300
Gift of James W. Dye, 1979. (1979.56.6)
When you look at or walk around this multiple from Jai-Alai, the work looks like it is pulsing or rippling. Jésus Rafael Soto was fascinated by the idea of movement, which he believed was the next innovation for art to explore. This work not only has the appearance of motion, it also encourages viewers to move around the gallery to better examine it. Soto liked to use optical illusion with the goal of drawing focus away from the artwork itself and toward concepts like movement and time.
Mary Bauermeister
German, 1934–2023, active in United States 1962–1972
Untitled, 1965
River pebbles on fabric-covered panel
Gift of Carolyn Phillips Minskoff, 1991. (1991.20.1)
Bauermeister glued river rocks and pebbles onto this panel and added comments that question the relationship between art and nature. At upper right, she even labels a painted group of rocks “art,” forcing attention to how this work blurs lines between artwork and found object. Her notes invite us to understand her process, which is as much about ideas as the finished product.
Louise Nevelson
American, 1899–1987
Mirror Shadow XXIV, 1986
Wood
RoBe Collection
Louise Nevelson foraged for the wood for her sculptures on the streets and loading docks of New York City. With attention to pattern, space, and balance, she looked past the everyday functions of objects such as window frames and banisters to use them as aesthetic elements. Her ability to transform such objects into imposing works of art made her one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century.
Karl Stirner
American, born Germany, 1923–2016
Far Left: Untitled, 1989
Near left: Untitled, 1990
Steel
Gift of Nadia Tornieporth, 2025. (2025.1.1 and 2)
“Iron is the part of the earth’s core, and I like getting into the deep guts of something.”
-Karl Stirner
Karl Stirner worked almost exclusively in iron, and iron alloys like steel, to construct his abstract sculptures. He was interested in the infinite malleability of the material and its ability to take any shape he could imagine. For these two artworks, Stirner combined salvaged metals from Bethlehem Steel, junkyards, and shipyards with new castings, transforming machine parts into mysterious structures inspired by shells, fossils, and natural science.
From 1983 until his death in 2016, Stirner advocated for Easton, PA, to become a new artistic hub to rival New York City and played a pivotal role in crafting a vibrant arts community in the Lehigh Valley.
Mildred T. Johnstone with Joseph Cantieni
American, 1900–1988 and American, 1911–1995
Woman in a Cobweb of Steel, 1954
Wool on linen, tent stitch, straight stitch, French knots, wheat stitch, outline stitch, spider stitch variation, trellis stitch
Gift of Margaret Balzer Cantieni, 2002. (2002.16.3)
For this needlepoint, Milly Johnstone took inspiration from Bethlehem Steel and transformed “the weblike tracery of a catwalk atop a blast furnace” into a vibrant and chaotic swirl of machine parts. Like the sculptures by Karl Stirner at left, Johnstone was interested in the malleability of steel and translated its transformative character and creative potential into her modern embroideries.
Woman in a Cobweb of Steel was also inspired by the Rubáiyát, a book of poetry by Omar Khayyám (Persian, 1048–1131). This collection of poems examined the relationship between man and the divine, life’s brevity, and spirituality, themes which Johnstone regularly explored in her textiles.
Benito Quinquela Martin
Argentine, 1890–1977
Puente en Construcion (Bridge in Construction), 1970
Etching and aquatint
Printer: the artist
Gift of J. I. and Anna Rodale, 1970. (1970.1)
Riva Helfond
American, 1910–2002
Coal Yard, ca. 1935–1937
Etching and aquatint, edition: 18
Printer: the artist
Publisher: Federal Art Project, Works Progress Administration, New York, NY
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1998. (1998.20.3)
Franz Kline
American, 1910–1962
Lehighton, 1945
Oil on canvas
Purchase: Leigh Schadt and Edwin Schadt Art Museum Trust Fund, 2016. (2016.12)
Harry Bertoia
American, born Italy, 1915–1978
Far left: Untitled, ca. 1953–1954
Near left: Untitled, ca. 1940s
Monotype
Printer: the artist
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1992. (1992.5.2 and 3)
Harry Bertoia made monotypes at least once a week throughout his career. Many of his prints explore ideas about space and form related to his sculptures.
Bertoia had to be slow and careful when making his metal sculptures, but he could work quickly and spontaneously with his prints. He explained, “To do one, then the other, is refreshing and stimulating, and one medium can do what the other could not. Yet at times they merge into a single image.”
Harry Bertoia
American, 1915–1978
Tonal, ca. 1969
Copper and brass
Gift of Brigitta Bertoia, 1981. (1981.34)
Top:
Stanley William Hayter
British, 1901–1988
Bison, 1927
Engraving, edition: 20
Printer: the artist, Atelier 17, Paris, France
Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2018. (2018.17.4)
Bottom:
Gabor Peterdi
American, born Hungary, 1915–2001
Rhino (Rhinoceros), 1934
Engraving, edition: 25
Printer: the artist, Atelier 17, Paris, France
Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2017. (2017.21.12)
William Baziotes
American, 1912–1963
Creature with Chain, 1936–39
Watercolor and gouache
Purchase: Priscilla Payne Hurd Endowment Fund, 2016. (2016.2.2)
Mauricio Lasansky
American, born Argentina, 1914–2012
Doma, 1944
Engraving, edition: 25
Printer: the artist, Atelier 17, New York, NY
Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2017. (2017.21.16)
Fred Becker
American, 1914–2004
Kaleidoscopic Organism, 1946
Etching, engraving, and soft-ground etching, edition: 50
Printer: the artist, Atelier 17, New York, NY
Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2016. (2016.17.23)
Seong Moy
American, born China, 1921–2013
Day Hunter, 1948
Intaglio, edition: 30
Printer: the artist, Atelier 17, New York, NY
The Grippe Collection, 2009. (2009.21.55)
Elsie Driggs
American, 1898–1992
Oxen, 1926
Oil on canvas
Purchase: The Reverend and Mrs. Van S. Merle-Smith Jr. Endowment Fund, 1998. (1998.18)
Elsie Driggs is often associated with the Precisionists, a group of American artists who in the 1920s depicted the industrialization and the modernization taking place across a rapidly changing American landscape using precise lines and crisp geometric shapes. Here, however, Driggs finds formal beauty in two oxen, reveling in the rhythmically undulating forms of the animals and the surrounding mountains.
Daniel Garber
American, 1880–1958
Springtime, Tohickon, 1936
Oil on canvas
Partial gift by Anonymous Donor
Harold Weston
American, 1894–1972
Giant Winter, 1922
Oil on canvas
Purchase: The Reverend and Mrs. Van S. Merle-Smith Jr. Endowment Fund, 1987. (1987.8)
Milton Avery
American, 1893–1965
Coney Island, 1933
Oil on canvas
Gift of Milton Avery Trust, 1994. (1994.20)
This painting by Milton Avery—one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century—represents the convergence of two major trends in art of the 1930s: social realism and modernism. The former is evident in Avery’s depiction of an ordinary scene at Coney Island, a beach popular at the time with working-class New Yorkers looking to escape the summer heat. Avery’s modernist treatment of his subject includes the painting’s tilted perspective, flattened forms, and multiple focal points.
George Bellows
American, 1882–1925
Dawn of Peace, 1918
Oil on canvas
Purchase: Gift of Estelle Reninger, 1990. (1990.15)
Motivated by a patriotic response to alleged German atrocities during World War I, George Bellows spent more than eight months on this painting. It belongs to a series of at least fifty related works that he created about wartime themes. Bellows probably found inspiration for Dawn of Peace in idealized popular illustrations of Red Cross nurses―the new heroines of the era.
Gifford Reynolds Beal
American, 1879–1956
Hiding the Liberty Bell in Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1938
Oil on Masonite
Gift of the Family of Gifford Beal, 2006. (2006.9)
Andrew Newell Wyeth
American, 1917–2009
In the Field, 1936
Watercolor
Gift of Kate Fowler Merle‑Smith, 1978. (1978.44)
James Henry Daugherty
American, 1889–1974
Flight Into Egypt, ca. 1920
Oil on canvas
Purchase: General Acquisition Fund, 2001. (2001.4)
Arthur Dove
American, 1880–1946
October, 1935
Oil on canvas
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the R. C. Kemper Charitable Trust, 1996.16.01.
In October, Dove uses abstracted forms to suggest a small white house against a glorious backdrop of fall foliage. His bold landscapes often drew inspiration from natural cycles, such as weather patterns and the seasons.
Dove was also interested in representing music through visual art (as was his peer Joseph Stella, whose work is at right). What kind of music does this painting evoke for you?
Joseph Stella
American, born Italy, 1877–1946
Dance of Spring (Song of the Birds), 1924
Oil on canvas
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, 2003.03.01.
Joseph Stella’s wonderous depictions of nature drew inspiration from his childhood memories of rural Italy. Stella immigrated to New York at eighteen, and initially focused on portraying the modern cityscape. In his forties, however, he began exploring the natural world in paintings like this one, which he based on “the elysian lyricism of the Italian spring.” Look for sparrows in the foreground, the national bird of Italy and one of Stella’s favorites.
Whiting Manufacturing Company
American silver manufacturer, 1866–1924
Coffee Set, ca. 1880
Sterling Silver, copper, and ivory
Purchase: Gift of Edith M. Merkle in memory of Dr. Ralph Merkle, 2003. (2003.7.1.)
The asymmetrical arrangements of flowers and insects on this coffee service, as well as the use of mixed metals (as in the Japanese vase shown here), demonstrate the influence of Japanese art on American silver designers in the 1870s and 1880s.
Yoshitsugu
Japanese, active late 1800s
Nogawa Company, manufacturer
Japanese, est. 1825
Vase with Tree Branch Motif
Mixed metal inlay
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Finkelstein, 1967. (1967.177.1)
Arthur Bowen Davies
American, 1862–1928
Interwoven, 1916
Oil on canvas
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the William T. Kemper Charitable Trust, UMB Bank, n.a., Trustee, 1995.017.01.
Louis Comfort Tiffany
American, 1848–1933
Tiffany & Company, manufacturer
New York, NY, 1837–present
Albert A. Southwick, designer
Presentation Vase with Cover, ca. 1915
Sterling silver with Limoges porcelain enamel decoration
Gift of Bethlehem Steel Co., 1985. (1985.25a, b)
Louis Comfort Tiffany was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the famous jeweler and founder of Tiffany & Company. He started his career as a painter, becoming the firm’s chief designer after his father’s death in 1902. This vase reproduces, in enamel, two Louis Comfort Tiffany paintings representing the Roman goddesses Flora and Ceres, and their retinues. The enamel was thinly applied, allowing the engraved sketch to show through.
Tiffany & Company had participated in every world’s fair since the Paris Exposition of 1855, and thus gained an international reputation. This urn was created as a demonstration piece for San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific Exposition. It showcases the quality and sumptuousness of Tiffany products, in order to entice clients to place orders. In 1922, it was presented to Charles M. Schwab, chairperson of Bethlehem Steel, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.
Frank Lloyd Wright
American, 1867–1959
Side Chair, ca. 1903
Oak and leather
Gift of Deborah S. Haight, 1997. (1997.6)
Frank Lloyd Wright designed this chair for a house he built for the Little family in Peoria, Illinois. When the Littles moved to Minnesota and had Wright design another house for them, they brought some of the furniture with them. This chair may, in fact, have been used in the library you see through this window, which is from the Little’s Minnesota home.
Unlike other progressive designers of his era, Wright drew inspiration from machine production. In this rectilinear chair, he makes obvious use of plain, machine-produced boards. The simplicity of his design highlights the beautiful arrowhead shapes in the wood’s grain, which can be seen on the chair back.
Attributed to Allen and Brother
Philadelphia, PA, active 1835–1896
Aesthetic Movement Desk,
1875–1880
American cherry, maple, and walnut; gilt and painted slate tiles
Purchase: Gift of Edith M. Merkle in Memory of Dr. Ralph Merkle, 2005. (2005.26)
This desk achieves an “artistic” look by evoking Japanese lacquer—with a little Gothic-inspired carving added for good measure. To mimic lacquer’s dark polish, the manufacturer treated the desk’s wood with iron acetate: this created a chemical reaction called ebonizing that colored the wood black. The desk’s gold panels with nature scenes echo lacquerware’s decorated surfaces.
Members of the Aesthetic movement valued beautiful furniture because they believed an attractive home would improve everyday life.
American or European
Side Chair, ca. 1880
Mahogany with mother-of-pearl, metal, and wood marquetry
Purchase: Gift of the King Family and General Acquisitions Fund, 2004. (2004.16.1)
In Front:
Artist once known
American
Dress, 1920s
Cotton with lace and drawn thread work
Gift of the Ellie Laubner Collection, 2009.
(2009.12.609)
Featuring a series of lace triangles, this dress is radical in its simplicity. Its geometric decoration echoes art-world trends: by the 1920s, American artists were using Cubism and abstraction to express the excitement of modern life. Dresses like this one offered a taste of such avant-garde movements for everyday wear. With an easy fit and lack of frills, this dress would have suited a woman embracing the new freedoms of the 1920s.
Behind:
Artist once known
Shawl, ca. 1920s–1940s
Silk
Transferred from American Textile History Museum, Gift of Harriet Werner, 2017. (2017.6.159)
Edward Weston
American, 1886–1958
My Desk Lamp, 1927
Ruth Shaw, 1922
Gelatin silver prints
Gift of Audrey and Bernard Berman, 1983.
(1983.53.13, 19)
With these studies of a desk lamp and a friend’s bobbed hair, Weston draws our attention to form and geometry in the world around us. Like his peer Edward Steichen (right), Weston was fascinated by the camera’s ability to show familiar things from a new perspective.
Edward Steichen
American, 1879–1973
Buttons and Threads dress fabric from
the Americana Prints series, 1927
Printed silk crepe
Gift of Kate Fowler Merle‑Smith, 1978.
(1978.26.397)
To create this unexpected textile design, Steichen arranged buttons and thread on a table, then photographed them using raking light. This dramatic lighting caused the buttons to cast large shadows, so at first glance they seem to float above the fabric.
This dynamic effect was exactly what manufacturer Stehli Silks hoped to achieve by commissioning artists like Steichen to design their textiles. A significant departure from conventional floral dress fabric, their Steichen prints were “an authentic expression of the spirit of modern art.”
Emil Lukas
American, born 1964
Expander, 2020
Thread over wood frame with plaster, paint, and nails
Purchase: The Estelle Reninger Fund, 2022. (2022.1)
You may have noticed Emil Lukas’s “thread painting” Expander appearing to change as you approached it. Using simple materials to create a complex piece, the artist wrapped variously colored threads in painstaking fashion around a frame, producing an illusory depth and aura that deceives the eye. Lukas, who is based in northeastern Pennsylvania, works improvisationally but with intention. Every decision—the placement of a single thread a fraction of an inch one way or another, the color of that thread, and the layering—contributes to the overall effect on the viewer’s perception.
Joan Snyder
American, born 1940
Moon Theater, 1986
Oil, acrylic and linen on canvas
Purchase: Gift of Sam Spektor and Ann Berman in Honor of Bernard Berman, 1989. (1989.42)
Moon Theater presents not one moon but a bounty of twenty-six. These are scattered around a stylized tree/crucifix form, a recurrent motif in Snyder’s work that symbolizes life and death. Snyder’s emotional paintings challenged the impersonal nature of male-led art movements like Minimalism, and made her an influential feminist artist. She explained, “Making art is, for me, practicing a religion. … My work is my pride, creates for me a heritage. It is a place to struggle freely at my altar.”
Kay WalkingStick
American, born 1935
Blame the Mountains III, 1998
Oil and brass leaf on canvas (left panel); oil on canvas (right panel)
Gift of David Echols, 2011. (2011.11a, b)
In this painting, the sensual curves of the female figure complement the rugged mountains. Kay WalkingStick’s series Blame the Mountains was inspired by the end of a romantic relationship during a trip to the Dolomites, a mountain range of northern Italy.
An important component of Easton-based WalkingStick’s identity is her Cherokee and Scottish-Irish heritage. She likes to create diptychs—artworks with separate panels that are joined together—which she states are “particularly attractive to those of us who are biracial.”