Founded in 1919 by Joseph G. Butler, Jr., The Butler Institute of American Art is the first museum of American art. The original structure is a McKim, Mead and White architectural masterpiece listed on the National Register of Historic places. Known worldwide as “America’s Museum”, the museum’s collection totals over 20,000 pieces in all media, and spans four centuries of work. Plan a visit!
EXHIBITIONS
Pastels from the Butler’s Collection
December 18, 2022 – February 26, 2023
Pastels as a viable and popular art medium can be traced back to the Impressionist era of the 1860s. Its immediacy has an appeal to artists who work in natural light, unlike oil paint that requires so much time to set. Pastel is a challenging medium to handle, requiring an ability to put the exact amount of pressure on the pastel stick to gain the desired look.
The Butler’s pastel collection has grown significantly in recent years. This is due primarily to the creation of the Heritage Program donation, provided annually to the Butler from the Pastel Society of America. Many of the most talented pastel artists’ works have entered the collection as a result of this unique project. Many other pastels were added through the years by purchase and as gifts.
The Modern Still Life from the Butler’s Collection
December 18, 2022 – February 26, 2023
Paintings of objects on a table, the still life concept, has been a part of the history of art for centuries. In recent years, the still life genre has emphasized technique, with photorealism leading the way. The Butler’s collection of still life painting has become a key part of the collection. The works of Gary Erbe, offer trompe l’oeil painting at its best. They have given the Butler collection a solid bounce forward, and Erbe’s thematic still lifes, with such themes as baseball, patriotism, and historic golf, have been particularly popular with the public.
Collages from the Butler’s Collection
December 18, 2022 – February 26, 2023
Collage, from the French verb coller, meaning ‘to glue,’ is the artistic process of gluing and assembling various materials to a flat surface. Collage can refer to both the actual process of cutting and pasting (the verb), and the final artistic product (the noun).
When Cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso incorporated bits of newspaper and printed wallpaper into their paintings, they subverted traditional definitions of what is important art. Combining painting, real-world objects, images, and ephemera into a single work, collage directly questions the tendency to separate fine art from everyday objects. It explores the delineations between so-called high and low culture, and the status of the artist.
London Amara – Ethos: The Alchemy of Spirit & Light
January 8 – March 5, 2023
London Amara was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1977 and raised in the remote woods of rural Ohio by parents she describes as “hippies but without the drugs, Amish without religion.” London Amara has created intimate black-and-white portraits and haunting images of the wooded landscapes of Florida, Ohio, California, and British Columbia. Employing a singular technical strategy, she works on site in a portable darkroom made from an ice-fishing tent to produce large-format, collodion photographic images. Amara’s immersion in the visually marked cycles of biological life is juxtaposed and combined with intimate portraiture that depicts family and friends as bound up with the places they come from and inhabit.
Maple Turner III: The Journey 1969-2023
January 15 – February 26, 2023
Meet-the-Artist Reception: January 15, 1-3pm
Lou Zona said of Maple, “It is proof positive that Turner’s talent level is in the elite category. He has flown under the radar perhaps because he has spent so much time studying in Europe and New York. They used to say about the artist Robert Rauschenberg that he would go into a closet and in 20 minutes could come out with a work of art. The same could be said of Maple Turner. He possesses that level of skill and creativity.”
Billy Gérard Frank: Eulogies & Palimpsests
February 5-April 23, 2023
Meet the Artist Reception: February 5, 1-3pm
Billy Gérard Frank born in Grenada, West Indies, is a multi-disciplinary artist, who works at the intersection of art, filmmaking, design and activism. Frank’s research-based practices interrogate issues dealing with migration, race, exile, global politics, and post-colonial and queer decoloniality, challenging normative discourses around them. His mix-media artworks and films have been exhibited and screened in group and solo shows in museums and institutions like Brooklyn Museum (2020); Yale, and international film festivals like the Berlinale, and Sundance, and is also in several private collections and institutions like the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts and Design, Farnsworth Art Museum among others.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITIONS
Pastel Society of America 2020: Enduring Brilliance
This exhibition, drawn from The Pastel Society of America’s annual fall exhibition, features works by some of the nation’s premier pastel painters. The Pastel Society of America (PSA) is the oldest organization of its kind in the nation. A primary mandate of the PSA is to provide a forum for the exhibition of works by the most accomplished pastel artists in the United States and abroad. Since 1972, the PSA Annual Exhibition: Enduring Brilliance!, held at the National Arts club in New York City, has been the premier event for pastel artists worldwide. Learn more
Stay tuned for new and exciting exhibitions and events!
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