WARNER ROTUNDA

College Residency
February 9 – June 8, 2008

Image on main page is by Mary Strebinger

The SBRMA College Residency is a unique opportunity for college artists to engage in a challenging environment of self-direction. Admitted students are typically from Midwestern colleges and reside in South Bend during the summer.  Students are awarded a workspace and a schedule of critiques, discussions, and workshops. In return, participants are expected to provide 5 hours a week of volunteer service to the museum over the course of the 12-week program.

Benefits of the program include:
*Access to a highly intense artistic peer group
*Exposure to the museum, its collections, exhibitions and programming
*Self-directed working time
*The ability to share a variety of individual college/university/art school experiences with other young artists
*The ability for students to take the experience of the residency program and museum back to their respective art programs

Having  successfully completed the program in Summer 2007, the following residents have been awarded an exhibition in the museum's Warner Rotunda: Mary Strebinger (painting), Saint Mary's College; Mary Claire Busk (ceramics), Saint Mary's College; Amy Reinthaler (painting), University of Notre Dame. Residency Mentor: Kate Cunningham (MFA candidate in photography), University of Notre Dame.

Midwestern Visions of Impressionisms (In Warner Rotunda and Carmichael Gallery)
September 8, 2007 - February 23, 2008 

This fall and winter the SBRMA presents Midwestern Visions of Impressionism featuring the paintings of 34 American painters who worked from the 1890s through the 1930s, the height of Impressionism in America.

The work of these talented Midwestern artists conveys a collective identity founded in a shared view of the Midwestern landscape, including areas like Brown County in southern Indiana, the Ohio Valley, and the rural outskirts of Chicago. This exhibition focuses on the similarities and differences among artists associated with the region around Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as within the larger American Impressionism movement.

In the late 1800's, American artists studying at home and abroad began developing a style of Impressionism that was similar to their French predecessors. Painting mostly en plein air (out of doors) these artists sought to convey the fleeting effects of sunlight and atmosphere, creating a heightened sense of reality in their work. They often painted landscapes and scenes of leisure, but the real subject they were rendering was the overall sense of light.

Instead of simply replicating the French style, their work became more of an American interpretation of it, blending European approaches and techniques with their own academic influences. American Impressionists tended to retain more structure and realism in their work than the French. It was through the free exchange of ideas found in American art circles and colonies that artists formed a distinctive style of regional Impressionism.

The approximately 70 works in this exhibition highlight artists, born or raised in the Midwest. Examples of artists included in the show include: John Ottis Adams, George Ames Aldrich, L. Clarence Ball, William Merritt Chase, Frank Virgil Dudley, William J. Forsyth, Alexis Jean Fournier, Lucy Hartrath, Emil Jacques, Pauline Palmer, Otto Stark, Theodore Clement Steele, and John Henry Twachtman.

An 80-page, soft cover catalog accompanying the exhibition authored by Christine Shearer and Dr. Dean A. Porter, Director Emeritus, Snite Museum of Art is available for sale in the SBRMA Administrative Offices.  The catalog

includes essays focusing on the regions of the Midwest that became known as "hot spots" for Impressionism with additional research and biographies contributed by independent curator Brigitte Foley, Massillon Museum curator Alexandra Nicholis, and private art dealer Michael Wright. The book includes an array of four-color images on high-quality, acid-free paper. In an excerpt from the catalog, Shearer writes:

The initial reaction to Impressionism in America was not positive, however. Many critics and artists alike reacted negatively. So one might wonder how it came to be the established style for so many decades.

At the turn of the century, America was in the throes of rapid change—from an agrarian society to an industrialized urban society.  The influx of immigrants led to rapid growth in many cities.  Industrialization widened the gap between the wealthy and the poor. As some scholars have stated, Impressionism became a way to distract viewers from their worries; it was seen as a search for order in a country gripped by chaos. The turning point in the American artists’ engagement with Impressionism was at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, the last and greatest of the nineteenth century’s World Fairs. At this time of increasing fragmentation and confusion, a search for an identity on both the personal and national level was emerging.  American critics were looking for an American art style, and this style became Impressionism.

Organized by the Massillon Museum, Ohio, this exhibition has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.  Additional support was provided by the Ohio Arts Council, the Stark Community Foundation, the Canton/Stark County Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Rotary Club of Massillon, and private individuals.

Funding for the exhibition at the SBRMA has been provided by: 1st Source Bank and the Carmichael Foundation, ArtsEverywhere Fund of the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, Radecki Galleries, Joan & James Bock, Charles S. Hayes, Marlene & Douglas Hunt, Ginger & Brian Lake, Mr. & Mrs. Michael A. Nickol, and Dr. & Mrs. Dean A. Porter.