Press

ALBANY, NY - Drawn primarily from the Whitney Museum of American Art's permanent collection, Meaning, Medium, and Method: American Sculpture 1940-1960, highlights the artistic expression and creativity of this period.

The exhibition, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, is on view from December 8, 2001 through February 24, 2002 in the New York State Museum's West Gallery. It is the seventh installment of the Fleet Great Art Exhibition and Education Program, and the Whitney Museum's second appearance in the successful series that brings great art from New York City art museums to Albany. The first exhibition from the Whitney, In the City: Urban Views, covering major artistic styles from 1900-1940, ran from May 21 to July 11, 1999, during the first season of the Fleet Great Art program.
&quote;This series has been a tremendous success for us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Fleet to bring great art to the Capital Region," State Museum Director Cliff Siegfried said. "The reputation of this exhibition series continues to grow as we reach out to new audiences, particularly students, through a comprehensive slate of education programs." These programs include a special exhibition preview and free workshop for teachers on December 6, school tours, general public gallery tours, and family art activities on the first weekend of every month.

"The Whitney has long been an ardent supporter of American sculptors, especially those featured in this exhibition," said Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. "The Museum's founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, was herself a sculptor who championed and promoted American art. The sculpture produced at mid-century was uniquely American and it established a firm basis for modern sculpture as it continued to break free of inherited conventions. We are proud to send these works to Albany, and we hope this exhibition helps bring greater appreciation of this work to audiences outside of New York City."

Meaning, Medium and Method will feature approximately 50 works from the premier American artists of the post-World War II period, including Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Herbert Ferber, David Hare, Ibram Lassaw, Seymour Lipton, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Theodore Roszak, David Smith, and Richard Stankiewicz. These unique and innovative works, created in the unstable era of the nuclear age, bring the viewer to the starting point of modern American sculpture.

Organized by Maura Heffner, assistant curator and manager, Whitney Touring
Exhibitions Program, the exhibition examines sculpture created during a period of uncertainty
that is relevant to the present. "Although World War II reinvigorated American confidence and
its economy following the harsh years of the Depression, the violence of the war and the new technology it deployed created an underlying anxiety and sense of instability in society," stated Ms. Heffner.

The emigration of many key modern artists from Europe during the war invigorated American art with new ideas and stylistic tools that encouraged the search for more diverse expressions. Artists began to move away from the realistic themes that dominated American art in the 1930s, and to explore divergent styles and techniques. Traditional processes, such as casting and direct carving, began to be replaced by assemblage and welding, and the use of time-honored materials, such as plaster, wood, bronze, and stone, which had typified sculpture to this point, were now rejected in favor of new materials and techniques. These new resources, made increasingly available after the war, can be seen in works such as Thorn Blossom (1948) by Theodore Roszak and Seymour Lipton's Sorcerer (1957).

There were also common explorations into abstraction and surrealist themes and imagery. Ibram Lassaw's first welded sheet-metal construction, Sculpture in Steel (1938), inspired by an earlier work by Alberto Giacometti, uses a gridlike architectural frame as a setting for an interchange between interior elements. Isamu Noguchi cut and shaped the emblematic sections of The Gunas (1946) from leftover slabs of marble that were originally intended to surface buildings. His calligraphic, interlocking shapes and allusions to archaic, mythological themes
reflect a surrealist sensibility. The sculpture produced at mid-century was uniquely American -it not only echoed the sentiments of the era, but established a firm beginning for modern sculpture as it continued to advance.

The Whitney Museum established the Touring Exhibitions Program in 1999 to create a series of exhibitions drawn from the permanent collection that would tour nationally and internationally each year. This program is part of a larger institutional mandate to make the Whitney's unparalleled collection and archives of 20th century American art accessible both to scholars and to a broad public beyond the Museum's walls.

The New York State Museum expresses its gratitude to Fleet for its generous support of the exhibition series; to Senator Roy Goodman and the New York State Senate, Assemblyman Ron Canestrari and the New York State Assembly, for their support; the Hearst Foundation Inc. for important seed funding and continuing support; Harry Rosenfeld for his vision and dedication to the exhibition series and First Lady Libby Pataki for her inspiration in bringing great art for all New Yorkers. The Museum also thanks the following media sponsors for the exhibition: WXXA/Fox 23, UPN 4, WPYX 106.5, and Lang Media, for their generous support.