Thorne Art Exhibit Celebrates MacDowell Colony Centennial
KEENE, N.H., 8/10/07 - The Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the MacDowell Colony with an exhibition of artwork by nine New England visual artists who have been in residence at the Peterborough, N.H., colony. “In Residence: Artists and the MacDowell Colony Experience” will open Tuesday, September 4, and continue through Sunday, October 14, at the Thorne Gallery located on the Keene State College campus.
The Friends of the Thorne will host an opening reception on Tuesday, September 4, which will feature a 7 p.m. screening of “Seasons of MacDowell,” four short films by the MacDowell Fellows at Keene State’s Putnam Arts Lecture Hall, Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond, followed by the exhibition reception at the gallery.
The Thorne Gallery and The Art Gallery at the University of New Hampshire co- organized this exhibition by inviting MacDowell visual artists from the New England states to submit work for consideration. From these submissions nine artists were chosen whose work represents a broad range of style, media, and subject matter.
Selected artists for this exhibition include Rosemarie Bernardi from Keene, N.H.; Tom Chapin from Phippsburg, Maine; Jim Coates from Lyndeborough, N.H.; Roberta Delaney, from Sherborn, Massachusetts.; Grant Drumheller, from New Castle, N.H.; Beth Galston, from Carlisle, Mass.; Olivia Parker, from Manchester, Mass.; Susan Schwalb, from Watertown, Mass.; and Judith Stone, from Burlington, Vt.
In addition to recent work, the artists included in the exhibition at least one work that was either created at MacDowell or directly influenced by the MacDowell experience. Accompanying the work on exhibition, artists’ statements reflect upon their MacDowell residency and describe how the residency experience affects their current work.
“I was privileged to be awarded four MacDowell residencies in the 1980s and one in 1990. My visits have fed my studio work ever since,” explained Rosemarie Bernardi, an associate professor of art and chair of the Department of Art at Keene State.
The MacDowell Colony is America’s first multidisciplinary artist residency program, founded in 1907. The colony’s mission is to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an environment in which to produce enduring work of the imagination. More than 250 writers, composers, visual artists, photographers, printmakers, filmmakers, architects, interdisciplinary artists, and those collaborating on creative work come to the colony each year from all parts of the United States and abroad.
“In Residence: Artists and the MacDowell Colony Experience,” the exhibition reception, and the film screening are open to the public free of charge. The Thorne Gallery is open Saturday to Wednesday, from noon to 4 p.m., and Thursday and Friday, from noon to 7 p.m. Located on Wyman Way on the KSC campus, the gallery is accessible to people with disabilities. To request accommodations for a disability, please call the gallery at least two weeks before your visit. For more information, call 603-358-2720 or visit http://www.keene.edu/tsag.
From September 14 through November 11, the Thorne will be one of the national venues for an exhibition of well-known American art. “From Cassatt to Wyeth: American Masterworks from the Mitchell Museum” includes work by such nationally known artists as Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, George Wesley Bellows, Robert Henri, William Glackens, and others. These artists are among the most significant figures in the development of American art and the wider history of art. This significant exhibition will be the basis of the Friends of the Thorne education program, from October 29 to November 9, for area schoolchildren and residents of retirement and nursing facilities.
