On View
A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund
Feb. 7 - July 25, 2010
A Force for Change is the first exhibition to explore the legacy of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, created in 1917 by the well known Chicago businessman and philanthropist. The Rosenwald Fund's Fellowship Program was designed to foster black leadership through the arts, literature, and scholarship, and between 1928 and 1948, the program awarded stipends to hundreds of African American artists, writers, and scholars across many disciplines.
Engaging with Nature: American and Native American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004)
May 16, 2010 - September 25, 2011.
This is the first exhibition ever presented by the Museum to integrate American and Native American art from the collection from all time periods and around a central theme. More than half of the nearly 40 works have never or rarely been displayed. The works in the exhibition encompass an astonishing variety of art and artifacts, from prehistoric Native American ceramics to historical 19th-century landscape paintings to contemporary staged photographs, suggesting various conceptions of landscape and nature.
Myths, Memories, and Inspirations: A Mural by Dan Fenelon
November 1, 2009 – Fall 2010
Dan Fenelon is best known for his vibrantly colored works that include sculpture, toys, paintings, and murals. His work is a blending of cartooning, street art, graffiti, and ancient tribal motifs. Dan will create this site-specific mural for MAM’s Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation Art Stairway. The mural, inspired by works from the Montclair Art Museum’s permanent collection, re-imagines these images with Fenelon’s distinct tribal style. Easily apparent in the mural is Tony Abeyta’s Hunters Procession, 1995, animal imagery found on both totem poles and transformation masks, as well as various pottery, basketry, and katsina images found within MAM’s Rand Gallery. Fenelon, like Abeyta, believes that “if paintings are successful, they should communicate a powerful force, a feeling that is contained in all of us.” In this work, Fenelon is able to translate these feelings and inspirations of native art into his own vocabulary and vision.
