Exhibitions 2006 at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art

PLEASE NOTE: All exhibition descriptions are excerpts from Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art's quarterly newsletter, L'Artiste.	Past Exhibition Highlights
	2007 2006	2005 2004	2003 2002
2006 January 22 - April 16 Craftsman Workshops, Eastwood, N.Y. Morris Chair, Model #2340, ca. 1901 Oak, with original foundation, 38 x 29 x 33 in. Grueby Faience Company, Boston George Prentiss Kendrick (American, 1850 – 1919), designer Vase, ca. 1900 Stoneware, 11 1/2 x 9 3/4 (dia.) in. Byrdcliffe Arts & Crafts Colony Linen Press, 1904 Oak with polychrome panel painted, 60 x 57 x 23 3/4 in. On loan from The Two Red Roses Foundation, Inc.	North and South Galleries *The American Arts & Crafts Home, 1900 – 1915: Selections from The Two Red Roses Foundation Collection* At the turn of the 20^th century a spirit of reform, now known as the Arts & Crafts movement, transformed American furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textile and other domestic furnishings.The new philosophy originated in England under the leadership of designer, critic and poet William Morris. He rejected the poor design and shoddy construction of manufactured goods that had swamped the retail market and adopted a sophisticated simplicity inspired by nature, high-quality craftsmanship and straightforward materials. This exhibition, culled from the collection of The Two Red Roses Foundation, is a sampler of the American Arts & Crafts movement from 1900 to 1915 featuring furniture, metalwork and pottery. Florida businessman Rudy Ciccarello has endowed the foundation with gifts from his personal collection, one of the largest in the United States. The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is proud to present the debut exhibition. Several icons presented in the exhibition reflect the interest in the American domestic environment characteristic of the Arts & Crafts movement. A classic, early Gustav Stickley armchair, three exceptional carved and painted Byrdcliffe colony cabinets and an eccentric revolving desk designed by Charles Rohlfs are among the nearly one hundred pieces on display. Pottery and tiles by the leading ceramics shops of their day - Grueby, Rookwood, Newcomb, Overbeck, Saturday Evening Girls and Teco; metalwork by the renowned Californian Dirk van Erp; leaded glass window by Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright; and paintings and woodblock prints by Arthur Wesley Dow and others will reflect a parallel modernist aesthetic promoted by American artists and educators. Charged with fostering public recognition and appreciation of the high quality craftsmanship and design philosophy of period, The Two Red Roses Foundation will continue to expand the collection, even as it turns its attention to an active exhibition and education. A catalog for the exhibition is available in the Museum Store. An essay by guest curator, Susan J. Montgomery is included. Susan holds a B.A. in art history from Smith College and a Ph.D. in American & New England Studies from Boston University and is an independent scholar of the decorative arts.
April 30 - June 25 Richard Florsheim (American, 1916 – 1979) Genesis, 1951 Oil on canvas, 70 x 48 in. Richard Florsheim (American, 1916 – 1979) Fireworks, 1972 Color lithograph, 34 x 22 in. John Sloan Mr. Smith was Badly Scared	North Gallery *Richard Florsheim: An Art Legacy* South Gallery *Drawn From Life: Works on Paper from the August L. & L. Tommie Freundlich Trust* Circulated by the Polk Museum of Art *Richard Florsheim: An Art Legacy* Chicago-born artist Richard Florsheim (1916-1979) was a noted American painter and printmaker whose career spanned nearly four decades. Richard Florsheim: An Art Legacy is a retrospective exhibition covering the time period beginning with the first national recognition of the artist’s somber prints depicting the devastation he witnessed during World War II to his late prints of refracted light seen in industrial and city landscapes. In between are expressionist paintings of Mexico and the American Southwest desert, surrealist visions and lyrical works reflecting summer stays in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The exhibition was organized by the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art from the extensive collection donated by the Richard Florsheim Art Fund to the Museum in 2005. The Art Fund was financed by monies designated in Florsheim’s will along with instructions to establish a trust fund to provide older American artists with grant support to recognize their careers through exhibitions, publishing catalogs and encouraging the acquisition of their works by museums. The Richard Florsheim Art Fund operated from 1989 until 2003 and provided nearly 500 grants for meritorious recognition. Currently, the Art Fund is merging its resources with other foundations, establishing an archive of Florsheim’s work, and donating his work to museums that collect and exhibit American art. Wall text and the gallery guide essay for the Richard Florsheim: An Art Legacy were written by Dr. August Freundlich, President of the Florsheim Art Fund Board of Trustees. Dr. Freundlich is a retired Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of South Florida and formerly was the founding Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University where he initially became acquainted with Richard Florsheim. The Museum is honored to have become a repository for these works and we thank Dr. Freundlich for his generous support for the project. *Drawn From Life: Works on Paper from the August L. & L. Tommie Freundlich Trust* Circulated by the Polk Museum of Art This exhibition, circulated by the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, is taken from the private trust collection established by August and Tommie Freundlich. It is comprised of drawings and works on paper by many of the most important American artists of the early to mid 20^th century. Drawn from Life consists of over 60 works by artists including six members of “The Eight” – Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan – as well as Milton Avery, Peggy Bacon, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Burchfield, John Steuart Curry, Stuart Davis, Dorothy Dehner, William Gropper, Chaim Gross, Robert Gwathmey, Walt Kuhn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Gaston Lachaise, Jack Levine, Reginald Marsh, Alfred Maurer, Ben Shahn, Moses and Raphael Soyer, Joseph Stella, Abraham Walkowitz, and Marguerite Zorach.
July 9 - August 27 Carmelo Arden Quin (Uruguayan, b. 1913) Almagro, 1947 Oil on hardboard, 31 1/2 x 22 in. Volf Roitman (Uruguayan, b. 1930) What is MADI?, 1999 Wood and electronics, 72 in. diameter	North Gallery *A Celebration of Geometric Art: MADI Homage to Carmelo Arden Quin* Carmelo Arden Quin was the pioneering South American modernist credited with founding the MADI movement. According to Quin biographer Shelley Goodman, the movement reflects Quin’s own brand of geometric art insisting on playfulness, irregular shapes and canvasses, decoupage and the importance of space, kinetic and transformable pieces and the dissolution of barriers between spectator and works of art. Quin was born in 1913 on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border and has lived in Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and France where he currently resides. He has traveled all over the world and has written poetry and prose and founded art movements and art journals in addition to working as an artist. He attracted and mentored a dynamic group of South American and European artists. This exhibition includes historic works by Quin and works by 17 other artists including artists from Argentina, Hungary, Italy and Venezuela. Says MADI artist Volf Roitman, “The purpose of the exhibition, Homage to Carmelo Arden Quin, is to assert irrefutably the innovative and inspirational role this great master has played in the 20^th century for four generation of artists”. South Gallery *The Moving MADI World of Volf Roitman* This exhibition is comprised of many of Volf Roitman’s current kinetic pieces and several historic 1959 pieces that demonstrate movement and are dedicated to Russian choreographer George Balanchine (1904 – 1983), regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. Roitman previously exhibited at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art at the end of 2002, Heart and Mind: The Art of Bo Breguet and Volf Roitman. Roitman’s piece What is MADI? has been in the Interactive Gallery since the close of that exhibition.
September 3 - October 29 Leonard Baskin (American, 1922 – 2000) Chief American Horse, 1973 Color Lithograph, 37 x 24 inches Leonard Baskin (American, 1922 – 2000) Man of Peace, 1953 Woodcut, 59.6 x 30.9 inches	North and South Galleries *Weird and Wonderful: Graphics by Leonard Baskin* Leonard Baskin is described as a true renaissance man. Considered to be a major figure in 20^th century American art, he was a writer, a book maker, a watercolorist, a printmaker and a sculptor. The subjects of his books ranged from the Bible to children’s stories to natural history. He used woodcut, lithography and etching in creating prints and subjects included portraits, flower studies, biblical, classical and mythological scenes. The son of a rabbi, Baskin was born in 1922 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was educated at a yeshiva before attending Yale University where he acquired his enthusiasm for the art of letterpress printing. Baskin received his BA from the New School for Social Research in 1949. Following graduation he spent time studying in Paris and Florence before settling at Smith College where he taught printmaking and sculpture from 1953 until 1974. In 1974 he moved to England returning to the United States in 1983. During those nine years he created a selection of prints, paintings and sculptures. Baskin produced his first imprint while at Yale and in 1942 founded Gehenna Press (Gehenna is Hebrew for hell), a small private press that specialized in fine book and print production. He continued to design and illustrate books for Gehenna Press throughout his life making Gehenna Press the longest running, privately owned press in the country. As an illustrator, Baskin was awarded a Caldecott Honor Book award in 1973, for illustrating the children’s book Hosie’s Alphabet. Baskin’s public commissions include a thirty foot long bas-relief for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, sculpture at the Woodrow Wilson Memorial in Washington, D.C. and a Holocaust Memorial sculpture on the site of the first Jewish cemetery in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His honors included a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Design and the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award. Retrospective exhibitions have been shown at the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress and the Albertina in Vienna. Baskin’s work is in major private and public institutions, research libraries and museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum and the Tate Museum in London and the Vatican Museums.
November 12 - January 7, 2007 Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973) Grand Oiseau (Large Bird), 1953 Ceramic Vase 25/75, 23 x 19 x 8 in. On loan from the Bernie Bercuson Collection of the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973) Dancing (Oval Platter), 1957 Ceramic, 15 1/2" dia. On loan from the Bernie Bercuson Collection of the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale	North and South Galleries *Picasso Ceramics from the Bernie Bercuson Collection of the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale* The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is pleased to present the traveling exhibition Picasso Ceramics from the Bernie Bercuson Collection of the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. The 50 pieces on exhibit were donated by Bernie Bercuson to the Museum of Art. The works were created between 1947 and 1971 and cover the entire period that Picasso worked in ceramics. Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) was born in Malaga, Spain and was considered to be a child prodigy. His first one man exhibition was shown by the time he reached age 16. The ceramics in this exhibition were created of his passion for clay objects after visiting Vallauris in the South of France in 1946. Picasso used ceramics as a surface to paint on and thought of ceramics as sculpture first of all. He created a ceramic prototype to be used to produce replicas and editions, in the same way that he produced his graphics. Picasso directed the production of the limited editions made up of 25 to 600 pieces. Abraham Rattner Contemporaries Gallery From War to Peace The complementary exhibition in the Abraham Rattner: Contemporaries Gallery was comprised of works from the Museum’s permanent collection and works on loan to the Museum. Included are prints, drawings and posters that chronicle Picasso’s artistic pursuits after the war years. A vintage large-scale poster of his masterpiece, Guernica, which has become an anti-war icon, was included. The only full scale reproduction of Guernica is on view in the Interactive Gallery along with a nine minute audio and light presentation which is available in both English and Spanish. Museum Lobby *Kids’ Guernica* Also on view during Picasso Ceramics was a large mural, 12 x 26 ft., created by Hudson Elementary School, Hudson, Florida, students for The International Children’s Peace Mural Project. The mural entitled Kids’ Guernica was created in 2005 under the supervision of art teacher Bonnie R. Markey.