Alfred Jacob Miller, American (1810-1874) Racing at Fort Laramie, c.1868; oil on canvas; 42½ x 59¼ inches. Collection of Jack and Susan Warner
Masterpieces of 19th and early 20th century American art including works by Winslow Homer, Jasper Cropsey, Alfred Jacob Miller, Frederick Frieseke, Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church will be on exhibition this summer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Presented by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, it is the second exhibition in a new series, “FOCUS,” spotlighting local and regional art collections.
AEIVA will present “American Sublime: Selections from the Jack and Susan Warner Collection of American Art” from June 3-Aug. 20, with an opening reception from 6-8 p.m. Friday June 3, at the AEIVA, 1221 10th Ave. South. The exhibition is free and open to the public. Call 205-975-6436 or visit www.uab.edu/aeiva. AEIVA is open to the public 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday and 12-6 p.m. Saturday. It is closed Sundays and holidays.
The exhibition is co-curated by AEIVA Director Lisa Tamiris Becker and Associate Professor of Art History Jessica Dallow, Ph.D., in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Art and Art History. It is supported in part by Judy and Hal Abroms and AEIVA’s generous members.
The southeastern United States represents a rich diversity of fine arts collectors, with each collector providing unique cultural viewpoints and aesthetic sophistication, Tamiris-Becker says.
Thomas Worthington Whittredge, American (1820-1910); Kentucky River Near the Dix River, undated; oil on board; 13¼ x 15½ inches. Collection of Jack and Susan Warner“American Sublime” features 17 works selected from the Warners’ private collection. The exhibition will highlight numerous movements in American Art, including The Hudson River School and the American Impressionist movement, and will foreground the significance of the search for a distinctly “American Sublime.”
Also opening June 3 at AEIVA are “María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Picturing/Performing the Self,” part of a series exploring Cuban art, and “Yaacov Agam: Metamorphic,” an exhibition featuring more than 30 small works by the world-renowned optical and kinetic art pioneer.
Campos-Pons explores the complexity of her heterogeneous Cuban identity in works that include large-format Polaroid photography, as well as video and mixed-media installation. She investigates themes of gender, sexuality and cultural identity. Her multilayered cultural heritage includes ancestry of African, Hispanic and Chinese descent.
In appreciation for Agam’s long history with the region — Agam created the eye-catching and recently restored “Complex Vision” work visible on the front of the Callahan Eye Hospital to passers-by on University Boulevard for four decades —“Metamorphic” pulls entirely from private collections in and around Birmingham. The exhibition will highlight works spanning multiple decades with a strong emphasis on Agam’s popular Agamograph technique, which utilizes lenticular printing to create different images in a single artwork when viewed from multiple angles.
Stream image: Winslow Homer, American (1836-1910), "The Backrush," 1895; oil on canvas; 22 x 29 inches. Collection of Jack and Susan Warner