Hillstrom Museum of Art Announces New Season

Gustavus Adolphus College is pleased to announce the 2016-2017 schedule of exhibitions in the Hillstrom Museum of Art on the Gustavus campus. The Museum’s season includes works from the Hillstrom collection and traveling exhibitions from major collections in the US, and it concludes with the annual Senior Studio Art Majors Exhibition in May. The Hillstrom Museum of Art is located in the C. Charles Jackson Campus Center on the Gustavus Adolphus College campus in Saint Peter, Minnesota. Admission to the Museum is free and open for visits weekdays from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. and weekends from 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

On September 12, the Museum will open Animal and Sporting Paintings from the Penkhus Collection: The Very English Ambience of It All, an exhibition of works from the private collection of Dr. Stephen and Mrs. Martha Penkhus. The exhibition will be open to the public between September 12 and November 6, 2016. An opening reception will be held in the Museum on Monday, September 12 between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. The Museum will also, as is its tradition for the Nobel Conference, have a reception on Tuesday, September 27 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.  The exhibition features sixty-one works that provide detailed glimpses into the English countryside, its occupants, and their activities, from around 1800 to the present.  Key British sporting and animal artists such as John Frederick Herring, Sr. (1795-1865), James Ward (1769-1859), and Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959), the latter who served as President of the Royal Academy, are represented, as is the famed Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), the sole French artist in the exhibit, who is acknowledged as one of the greatest animal painters in the Western tradition.

The Hillstrom Museum of Art will present its second exhibition of the year with Action! The Anatomy of LeRoy Neiman’s Champions, November 21, 2016 – January 27, 2017. An opening reception for this exhibition will be held on Monday, November 21 from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.  The traveling exhibit was organized by the LeRoy Neiman Foundation in New York with the Louisiana State University Museum of Art in Baton Rouge. Neiman (1921-2012) is known for his popular and colorful, semi-abstract paintings of sports figures, but he also was a master draftsman with a remarkable ability to capture figures in motion. He was influenced by artists of New York’s Ashcan School, an important part of the Hillstrom Museum of Art’s collection. Neiman was originally from Minnesota, where his first teacher was Clement Haupers (1900-1982)), an artist well known in the state who was a friend of Museum namesake Richard L. Hillstrom, who collected his works widely.

The Museum will host Made in U.S.A.: Rosenquist/Ruscha beginning on February 13 and running through April 23, 2017. An opening reception is scheduled for 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. on Monday, February 13, 2017.  The exhibition features works by two of America’s top Pop artists, Ed Ruscha (born 1937) and James Rosenquist (born 1933), contrasting the cool, west coast approach of the former with the frantic, east coast work of the latter.  The exhibition was formed from the holdings of Jordan D. Schnitzer of Portland, an avid collector who generously shares his collection for exhibitions, especially in college and university galleries and museums.  This exhibition is being supported by a generous grant from the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation.

Concurrent with Made in U.S.A.: Rosenquist/Ruscha, the Museum will present another of its FOCUS IN/ON exhibitions, this one considering a 1932 watercolor in the Museum’s collection titled Manhattan Towers by American urban realist Reginald Marsh (1898-1954).  The painting will be analyzed collaboratively by Museum Director Donald Myers and Elizabeth Jenner, Associate Professor and Chair of the College’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

The 2016-2017 exhibition season in the Hillstrom Museum of Art will conclude with the 2017 Senior Studio Art Majors Exhibition, May 6-28. This exhibition will open on Honors Day 2017 with a reception in the Museum set for 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.  This annual juried exhibition is a culminating even in the curriculum of the graduating Gustavus senior studio art majors and demonstrates the diversity of styles and approaches taken by the student artists.

The Hillstrom Museum of Art welcomes all visitors, from on campus and off, and its exhibitions and programs are free of charge.  For additional information, please see the Museum’s website: gustavus.edu/ hillstrom.