Orlando, FL — July 17, 2017

The Mennello Museum of American Art has so much in store over the next couple months! Take a look at our upcoming events and programs in conjunction with our current exhibition, The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston.

WORKSHOPS

WORKSHOP WEDNESDAY: CAMERA MODES & ISOs
JULY 19 • 5:30 – 8:30 PM 
Don’t let the mysterious Manual Mode of your camera keep you from capturing those wonderful moments popping up all around you! Bring your camera to the Mennello Museum, and get to know the basics of operating your camera’s ISO, shutter speed and aperture in this workshop with instructor Sherri Bunye, former Studio Artist at Crealdé School of Art. You can learn the language of any SLR camera, film or digital!

THURSDAY MORNING IS FOR FAMILIES: PHOTO HARD BOARD PANEL TRANSFER
JULY 27 • 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Take a break from the summer heat and join us for an inspiring workshop. Compose your own William Eggleston inspired photograph on a group excursion through the museum and grounds. Then, come back and transfer it in full black-and-white contrast onto a hard board panel. Don’t forget to sign your work! Led by instructor, Jolie Spelman.

TEEN EDITION WORKSHOP WEDNESDAY: PINHOLE CAMERAS AND COMPOSITIONS
AUGUST 9 • 2 – 5 PM
Create and design your own pin-hole camera with instructor Jacoub Reyes. We’ll go on an excursion to hunt for the perfect shot, epitomizing the Beautiful Mysterious in the Mennello Museum’s own backyard.

WORKSHOP WEDNESDAY: COLOR THEORY AND THE GOLDEN HOUR

AUGUST 16 • 5:30 – 8:30 PM
Want to document the extraordinary in your everyday life in all of its phenomenal light? Join photography instructor and William Eggleston enthusiast, Sherri Bunye, as she brings you exciting new ways to compose photographs harnessing the dynamic theories of color. This workshop is great for all levels of experience, all types of cameras, and an awesome way to follow up on the Color Modes & ISOs workshop on July 19.

HOME SCHOOL DAY: PRINTING IN THE SUN
AUGUST 31 • 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Learn about the introduction of photography to the world and how it has changed from the beginning of its invention to the dye-transfer printings of William Eggleston. Home school students, artists in the museum, go on a tour of the exhibits and compose their own cyanotypes harnessing the light of the sun! Led by instructor Jacoub Reyes.

MOVIES AT THE MENNELLO

We’ve moved to Friday nights! mennellomuseum.org/moviesatthemennello

Finding Vivian Maier
JULY 28 • Extended museum hours 4:30 – 6 PM; movie starts at 6 PM

(2013; 1 hour 23 min)
A documentary on the late Vivian Maier, a nanny in 60-70s New York and Chicago who, unbeknownst to many, had a secret passion for photography. Her incredible body of work, found in a cache of 100,000 negatives earned her a posthumous reputation as one of the most accomplished street photographers.

AUGUST 25 • 5:30 – 8:30 PM
Stay tuned for more details.

SPEAKER

ARTS LECTURE: ELEMENTS OF THE EERIE BY DR. KERI WATSON AUGUST 1 • 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Join University of Central Florida, SVAD professor, Dr. Keri Watson for a presentation on the eeriness and unease of photographer on display, William Eggleston.

In 1969 Walker Evans famously remarked that “color photography is vulgar,” to which William Eggleston replied, “The world is in color and there’s nothing we can do about it.” Eggleston, known for his early and emphatic use of the dye-transfer process to achieve super-saturated color images, has captured everything from red ceilings to black ovens to green bathtubs. His photographs, which emphasize color as form, force the viewer to see the world in a new way and to recognize photographs as objects, but they are also unsettling. Following the tradition of Southern Gothic literature, Eggleston’s photographs appear on the surface to be ordinary suburban scenes: backyards, barbecues, and tricycles, but behind them lurks an eerie uneasiness, a sense of foreboding and longing that strikes at the heart and psyche of the viewer.

Keri Watson joined the faculty at the University of Central Florida in 2014, having taught previously at Ithaca College, Auburn University at Montgomery, and the Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta. The recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts grants, an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant, and a Fulbright Fellowship to teach American Art History at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, she specializes in twentieth-century American art and literature and the history of photography. She has contributed essays to publications including: Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race; the Journal of Museum Education; Disability and Art History; and Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature; and regularly presents her work at the College Art Association, the Southeastern College Art Conference, and the American Literature Association.

GALLERY TALK

FIRST FRIDAY TOUR WITH THE DIRECTOR
(FREE WITH ADMISSION)

AUGUST 4 • 11 – 11:45 AM
Join Executive Director, Shannon Fitzgerald in a detailed investigation of The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston. Fitzgerald will lead a group through the latest exhibition providing commentary on the unexpected and fantastic photographs from Southern color-surrealist, William Eggleston.

FIRST FRIDAY TOUR WITH CURATOR OF EDUCATION
(FREE WITH ADMISSION)

SEPTEMBER 1 • 11 – 11:45 AM
Join Associate Curator of Education, Katherine Navarro for a guided exploration of The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston. Navarro will take a group through some highlights of the latest exhibition, providing insights into the worlds created by William Eggleston in his color photographs.

FREE FAMILY FUNDAY

Visit mennellomuseum.org/freefamilyfunday for details.

Otherworldly Imaginings
AUGUST 13 • 12 – 2:30 PM

If you were an alien from another world, in another galaxy – what would you take pictures of on your trip to Orlando? Imagine and create a vibrant image to define life here. Join us for family-friendly docent touring throughout the day! The galleries will remain open until 4 p.m.

To view all of our upcoming events and programs, visit www.mennellomuseum.org/events

About the Museum
The Mennello Museum of American Art, established in 1998, is owned and operated by the City of Orlando. This intimate cultural gem, located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, is just minutes from downtown Orlando and is housed in what was once the private home of Howard Phillips, son of local philanthropist Dr. P. Phillips.

The Museum includes the largest collection of paintings by self-taught artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), which was generously donated from the collection of Michael A. Mennello and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello. The museum also presents a series of temporary exhibitions throughout the year with local and nationally renowned American artists.  The museum’s Grounds for Exhibitions currently features two large-scale sculptures by internationally acclaimed artist Alice Aycock through 2018.

For 18 years, The Mennello Museum has provided Orlando and Central Florida―residents and visitors―opportunities to understand and value creativity through innovative experiences with art located on beautiful Lake Formosa that further connects nature, art, and communal gathering. Our goal is to encourage creative and diverse experiences with art that nurtures audiences while reflecting the dynamic relationship between art and society.

On view now through September 3, The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston: https://www.mennellomuseum.org/eggleston

Opening September 15, Time and Thought: Art of the United States from the Cornell Fine Arts Museum: https://www.mennellomuseum.org/time-and-thought

The Mennello Museum is located at 900 E. Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803.

mennellomuseum.org · facebook.com/mennellomuseum
instagram.com/mennellomuseum · twitter.com/mennellomuseum

The Mennello Museum of American Art is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.

Download this press release.

Francesca Ascione
Marketing & Graphic Design Coordinator
The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando
francesca.ascione@cityoforlando.net
407.246.4113

Orlando, FL — May 24, 2017

The Mennello Museum of American Art is pleased to present the work of William Eggleston in their upcoming solo exhibition, The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston. The exhibition will be on view from June 23 through September 3.

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston is guest curated by American novelist, Megan Abbott, and includes 36 color and black-and-white photographs from the University of Mississippi Museum’s remarkable permanent collection, including some photos never before exhibited.

Eggleston, a renowned American photographer, is acclaimed for elevating color photography and transforming ordinary scenes into fine art. Through the eye of Eggleston, nothing is ordinary, despite his photographs’ apparent depiction of ordinary things and ordinary people doing ordinary things.  Eggleston once said, “I am at war with the obvious,” a phrase curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art thought apt enough to use as the title for a 2013 exhibition of his photographs from their permanent collection

Shannon Fitzgerald, Mennello Museum Executive Director, states “William Eggleston is the pioneer of color photography and single-handedly introduced color to the field, thus elevating photography’s place in art history and museums.  I am thrilled to share his compelling images with Orlando.”  She continues: “ His work is deeply poetic, utilizing his own invented visual language that includes the mundane in everyday life—barns, trains, cafes, motels, gas stations, parking lots, laundry lines, Coke signs—creating a distinct Southern vernacular without nostalgia or sentimentality. It is exciting to share one of America’s greatest photographers with our community.”

A Memphis native, Eggleston acquired his first camera in 1957 at age 18. During his time studying art at Ole Miss, his interest in photography grew. He soon began to experiment with color negative film. Today, Eggleston is a world-renowned innovator of color photography, transforming ordinary scenes into fine art.

The exhibition is organized by the University of Mississippi Museum, who owes its vast collection of Eggleston photographs to the generosity of Dr. William R. Ferris, scholar, author and founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi who personally donated his collection to Ole Miss. Ferris, a photographer and longtime friend of Eggleston, describes him as “the greatest living color photographer.”  “He is the Picasso or Faulkner of what he does.” Ferris continues, “This exhibit allows everyone to know his work, which is part of the legacy of Ole Miss.”  Michael Glover, art critic for the British newspaper The Independent, agrees. His review of the 2013 opening of the permanent Eggleston installation at the Tate Modern was headlined, “Genius in colour: Why William Eggleston is the world’s greatest photographer.”

Greatest or not, art critics agree that Eggleston’s work has shaped art photography since 1976, when the Museum of Modern Art presented the now famous exhibition William Eggleston’s Guide, its first-ever solo exhibition of color photography.  Since that watershed exhibit, Eggleston’s work has influenced art photography and even filmmaking. Film directors citing his influence include John Huston, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Cohen and David Lynch.

It was Lynch who brought Eggleston to the attention of the exhibition’s guest curator, American novelist Megan Abbott, University of Mississippi’s 2013-2014 John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence and an Edgar Award-winner.  Abbott has drawn her own inspiration from his photos for many of her novels. She helped choose the pieces for the exhibit, which capture scenes from more than two decades.  “To me, his photographs evoke entire worlds, not worlds we merely see, but worlds we feel, smell, touch,” she said. “When you look long enough at his photographs, like the gorgeous, lonely blue parking lot chosen as one of the exhibit’s central images, you get lost in it. You’re in another place.”  Acclaimed photographer, first cousin and Eggleston protégé Maude Schulyer Clay served as consulting adviser for the exhibit. In 2015, German photo book publisher Steidl produced a collection of Clay’s portraits titled Mississippi History. Steidl discovered her photographs while working with Eggleston on the multi-volume set Chrome (2011) and Los Alamos Revisited (2012).

Eggleston’s published books and portfolios, include Los Alamos (actually completed in 1974, before the publication of the Guide) the massive Election Eve (1976; a portfolio of photographs taken around Plains, Georgia before that year’s presidential election); The Morals of Vision (1978); Flowers (1978); Wedgwood Blue (1979); Seven (1979); Troubled Waters (1980); and The Louisiana Project (1980). William Eggleston’s Graceland (1984) is a series of commissioned photographs of Elvis Presley’s Graceland, depicting the singer’s home as an airless, windowless tomb in custom-made bad taste. Other series include The Democratic Forest (1989), Faulkner’s Mississippi (1990), and Ancient and Modern (1992).  In 2016, The Democratic Forest was presented in a solo exhibition at David Zwiner, New York with a new publication.

Of his 2013 Metropolitan Museum exhibition, At War with the Obvious, New York Times critic Ken Johnson writes “But photographs like Mr. Eggleston’s are not like movie images, which come in linear sequences, establishing explanatory narratives around scenes that would be mysterious, were they viewed in isolation.  There is no before and after here, so the photographs remain provocatively enigmatic, which accounts for much of their poetic resonance.  His pictures tease the mind, eliciting associations and possible meanings that swirl around them like bugs around a light bulb.”

In 2016, The New York Times Style Magazine featured Eggleston on the cover of the “Greats” edition, photographed by famed contemporary photographer Wolfgang Tillmans.  Writer Augusten Burroughs wrote “A visit with the American Master of color photography reveals him to be every bit as brilliant, confounding and heartbreakingly soulful as the pictures he makes.”

A clear spring rises somewhere on the home place, for the human strain begins there for Mr. Eggleston, and we see it in what follows: it turns into a river that runs through, or underneath, every place succeeding it.  Whatever is done to block it or stop its flow, it surfaces again.  Pure human nature proves itself in likely or unlikely places.

—Eudora Welty

William Eggleston, born in 1939 currently lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston is organized by the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses with exhibition support provided by the Friends of the Museum. Additional support by Dr. William R. Ferris and the Eggleston Artistic Trust.

Please join The Mennello Museum of American Art in celebration of the opening of The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston

The City of Orlando, Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art, The Mennello Museum Board of Trustees together with Executive Director, Shannon Fitzgerald, invite you for an evening celebrating the work of the incredibly talented artists in our community.

Preview & Opening Reception
Friday, June 23

Members-only Preview
5:30–6:30 p.m.

Public Opening Reception
Free for members | $5 for visitors
6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

PLEASE NOTE THE BELOW REQUIRED CREDITS FOR IMAGES:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/14vb82ffl9ok3l4/AADxaLQgX9GLsts-HBgNSY5xa?dl=0

1. William Eggleston, Untitled, 1973, color photograph.
   Collection of the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses, gift of Dr. William R. Ferris.
2. William Eggleston, Untitled, c. 1971, color photograph.
   Collection of the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses, gift of Dr. William R. Ferris.
3. William Eggleston, Untitled, 1971, color photograph.
   Collection of the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses, gift of Dr. William R. Ferris.
4. William Eggleston, Untitled, 1977, taken in 1976, color photograph.
   Collection of the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses, gift of Dr. William R. Ferris.

About the Musuem
The Mennello Museum of American Art, established in November 1998, is owned and operated by the City of Orlando. This intimate cultural gem located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, is just minutes from downtown Orlando, and is housed in what was once the private home of Howard Phillips, son of local philanthropist Dr. P. Phillips. Among the Mennello Museum’s many treasures is the permanent collection of paintings by self-taught artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), which was generously donated from the collection of Michael A. Mennello and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello.

On view now through June 18, OUR ORLANDO and AMERICAN YOUTH: OUR IDENTITY. OUR ORLANDO presents the work of five rising local artists who have shaped the visual fabric of The City Beautiful through art. Supporting and fostering the creativity of Orlando’s talented teen artists, AMERICAN YOUTH: OUR IDENTITY aspires to empower rising high school artists throughout Orlando, providing a space for engagement and conversations about their art.

The Mennello Museum is located at 900 E. Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803.

mennellomuseum.org · facebook.com/mennellomuseum
instagram.com/mennellomuseum · twitter.com/mennellomuseum

The Mennello Museum of American Art is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.

Download this Press Release.

Francesca Ascione
Marketing & Graphic Design Coordinator
The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando
francesca.ascione@cityoforlando.net
407.246.4113

Orlando, FL — April 14, 2017

The Mennello Museum of American Art is pleased to announce two new exhibitions, OUR ORLANDO and AMERICAN YOUTH: OUR IDENTITY. Both exhibitions will be on view at The Mennello Museum_­ from May 19 to June 18.

OUR ORLANDO

OUR ORLANDO presents the work of five rising local artists who have shaped the visual fabric of The City Beautiful through art — enriching nearly every surface of the physical city. Their individual methods range in form and technical experimentation from calligraphy and comic arts to murals and the digital arts. These are the voices and visual architects who create the landscape of our Orlando.

The artists of OUR ORLANDO are collectively tied together by their keen use of art as a tool to tiptoe the line between playful and serious subtexts — creating an inviting and often funny image with weighty meanings. They all successfully navigate living and working as artists in our community. Many apply their art toward evoking thoughtfulness, introspection, and even action on behalf of the viewer. All artists exhibiting in OUR ORLANDO identify as digital artists, multimedia artists, illustrators, muralists, and designers in contrast to the universal titles of artist or sculptor. Their non-traditional materials provide the opportunity for art to exist in our everyday world. Like Pop Artists before them, OUR ORLANDO artists force us to question the hazy, if at all present, line between commercial art and high art.

Katherine Navarro, Marilyn L. Mennello Associate Curator of Education and curator of OUR ORLANDO, first began working with the artists nearly a year ago in the creation of a widely-distributed Pulse coloring book for the Orlando United Assistance Center.  The coloring book was brought to life in order to create a moment of respite for those seeking assistance after the Pulse tragedy. The coloring book work was each independently created in compassionate and financial support, having run print editions with proceeds donated to charities such as the One Orlando Fund, Equality Florida, The Center for Orlando’s LGBTQ + Latinx communities and first responders. The five OUR ORLANDO artists, along with three other local artists, generously donated their art for the production the Pulse coloring book, which soon thereafter evolved into a partnership with The City of Orlando in creating a fence mural that currently wraps around Pulse Nightclub.

In the exhibition’s premiere year, OUR ORLANDO features new and never before exhibited works from Katrina Constantine, Hillery Powers, Chris Tobar Rodriguez, Andrew Spear and Rhett Withey.

Katrina Constantine is a comic artist and illustrator from Orlando, Florida. Specializing in digital art, Constantine began teaching herself to illustrate digitally in 2001 and launched her own blog, Kicking Cones, in 2010. She turned her artwork and blog following into a full-time career.  Inspired by Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Sam Brown (Explodingdog), Constantine constructs witty and touching illustrations infused with meaning in short comics featuring her dogs, famous penguins and a cast of light-hearted, personified flora and fauna. Constantine animates portraits of her canine subjects, placing them in detailed, atmospheric landscapes. She pushes and evolves her methods, moving beyond outlined and flattened color fields of streamlined, easy-to-read images into dense textural digital layers of shiny, clean dog fur and playful grass.  Her goal is to enable the viewer to see and connect with another side of a misunderstood dog breed by depicting her pit bull mixes in heartwarming scenes. These honest and comical portraits are true to her own loyal and loving dogs’ daily larks.

Hillery Powers is a designer and hand lettering artist originally from Hammond, Indiana. She studied Art History abroad in Italy while pursuing dual Studio Art and Advertising degrees from the University of Central Florida.  She began her career in New York City and Big Sur, California, as an artist travelling across country discovering a passion to cultivate local arts communities, which she now applies to her home in Orlando. Co-founding Local Love Orlando and working with Macbeth Studio, Powers facilitated the creation of Local Love Nights to raise funds and awareness for small local organizations, like Zebra Coalition and Deux Mains Designs. Her art begins as a simple photo booth backdrop – large scale, lively, internet-ready and open for modern portraits. The concept; however, goes deeper into the idea of shared images in our social world, and is about the power of disseminating accessible and sharable information. For Powers, her creative works are a way to inspire action to stand up for, and aid, the marginalized in our community.

Chris Tobar Rodriguez is a multimedia artist and graphic designer born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Tobar began his career as one of the youngest in his class at the Art Institute in Chicago before moving to Orlando to pursue a recording arts degree at Full Sail University. While in Orlando, Tobar discovered an admiration for the design of typography, color, and expression and completed his degree in Digital Art and Design. Tobar is a co-founder of the Orlando street artist collective B-Side Artists and his work has been shown nationwide. Combining photography, illustration, typography and pulsating colors, Tobar creates a symbolic language representative of personal and, sometimes, isolating, experiences. Inspired by notions on how the mind communicates with the soul, hints of color pull the viewer up and away from dark; an underlying but ever-present contrast. For the artist, each object portrayed represents a universal metaphor surrounding life — a weightless wish guiding one’s desire in the form of a feather on the back of an arrow, which either misses or pierces the chosen mark. The symbols Tobar uses describe a journey of becoming oneself through these actions of hope and aim.

Andrew Spear is a mural artist and illustrator born on the South Shore of Boston in 1973. He attended the Art Institute of Boston and The Ringling School of Art and Design before heading to New York City where he developed his notable graphic techniques in fine art and set design before settling in Orlando. Earning a popular reputation for murals around town of thin lined sheet-music meets pop-culture figures and scenes, Spear’s careful lines meld organic and geometric areas of highlight and shade that teem with energy, excitement, and vibrancy.  Harnessing the stroke of a pen into a signature style is not the end, and Spear’s resolve to unceasingly generate new and exciting work has led to a commitment to harness and elevate materials not often exhibited in the art world by pursuing a medium and new subject matter through colored pencils.

Rhett Withey is a design artist who was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. He serves as a board member of The American Institute of Graphic Arts Orlando Chapter and is a lead designer for BIGEYE advertising. Withey explores and illustrates the monsters and characters of our collective imaginations in humorous scenarios around Orlando, citing familiar landmarks and locales. Employing black graphic lines and large areas of color, Withey’s goal is to make the viewer smile, and even laugh. His stories marvel with admiration around the places and spaces we inhabit every day —  from the depths of Lake Eola where we paddle innocently on the surface to the dumpsters on Church Street after our nights out on the town. Beneath the humor, there is wit.  Even the strongest willed can feel the uneasiness of the world and may dream up terrors when surrounded by nothing but the deep, dark, and empty landscapes of the mind. The dark; however, swiftly rebounds when the monsters of our mind are revealed, pulled from the shadows and manifested.

AMERICAN YOUTH: OUR IDENTITY 

Supporting and fostering the creativity of Orlando’s talented teen artists, AMERICAN YOUTH: OUR IDENTITY aspires to empower rising high school artists throughout Orlando, providing a space for engagement and conversations about their art. A common thread among the artists of OUR ORLANDO is the important role their high school educators played in their lives — pushing them to pursue their dreams in the arts. The local community was asked to submit artwork of all media based on the theme of identity — an array of overlapping or distinct qualities one uses to recognize self, a person, or group.

Katherine Navarro, Marilyn L. Mennello Associate Curator of Education and curator, states: “I am elated to highlight the work of these five talented artists who contribute to Orlando’s bourgeoning arts culture. In the city, we are fortunate to see their art every day on the walls of our favorite restaurants and shops, in our galleries, and even on our shirts. Their work is so deeply rooted in our daily lives that it is essential to take a closer look and to consider their gifts with fresh context. Each artist has created new and never before seen pieces for this show.” She continues “I observed this wonderful craving from the artists to devote their time surpassing previous technical boundaries and unexplored concepts they had not been able to pursue until this point, to demonstrate their greatest works yet.”

OUR ORLANDO and AMERICAN YOUTH: OUR IDENTITY are curated by Katherine Navarro, Marilyn L. Mennello Associate Curator of Education and is organized by The Mennello Museum of American Art.

Please join The Mennello Museum of American Art in celebration of the opening of OUR ORLANDO and AMERICAN YOUTH: OUR IDENTITY.

The City of Orlando, Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art, The Mennello Museum Board of Trustees together with Executive Director, Shannon Fitzgerald, invite you for an evening celebrating the work of the incredibly talented artists in our community.

Preview & Opening Reception
Friday, May 19

Members-only Preview
5:30–6:30 p.m.

Public Opening Reception
Free for members | $5 for visitors
6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Catering and signature mixed drinks provided by NOVA Restaurant
Craft beer provided by Orlando Brewing
Music by FoxForce005

PLEASE NOTE THE BELOW REQUIRED CREDITS FOR IMAGES:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6jrdshicmxwn8rr/AAAN8oFRoDffluaAvlqK3bpFa?dl=0

Chris Tobar Rodriguez, Native touch, 2017, mixed medium on wood.

Folders:

Katrina Constantine

1. Katrina Constantine, Remember the Cuddling Titans, 2017, digital painting.
2. Photo credit: Frogman Photography

Hillery Powers

1. Hillery Powers, Orlando Loves, 2017, acrylic on gator board.
2. Photo credit: Mike Spectacle

Chris Tobar Rodriguez

1. Chris Tobar Rodriguez, Letting the Steam Out, 2017, mixed media.
2. Photo credit: Peterson Guerrier

Andrew Spear

1. Andrew Spear, Sculpted Flowers, 2017, colored pencil on wood.
2. Photo credit: Andrew Spear

Rhett Withey

1. Rhett Withey, Lake Eola Kraken, 2017, digital art, archival printing.
2. Photo credit: BIGEYE

About the Musuem
The Mennello Museum of American Art, established in November 1998, is owned and operated by the City of Orlando. This intimate cultural gem located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, is just minutes from downtown Orlando, and is housed in what was once the private home of Howard Phillips, son of local philanthropist Dr. P. Phillips. Among the Mennello Museum’s many treasures is the permanent collection of paintings by self-taught artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), which was generously donated from the collection of Michael A. Mennello and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello.

On view now through May 7, BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST. This exhibition presents large-scale oil paintings that are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant American Realist painters of his generation.

The Mennello Museum is located at 900 E. Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803.

mennellomuseum.org · facebook.com/mennellomuseum
instagram.com/mennellomuseum · twitter.com/mennellomuseum

The Mennello Museum of American Art is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.

Download this press release.

Francesca Ascione
Marketing & Graphic Design Coordinator
The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando
francesca.ascione@cityoforlando.net
407.246.4113

Orlando, FL — April 6, 2017

The Mennello Museum of American Art is pleased to announce a generous $5,000 sponsorship for our new Free Family Funday program provided by the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation. In addition, the City-appointed Mennello Museum Board of Trustees has gifted $5,000, raised at this year’s Indie-Folkfest, to the museum’s family-friendly education programs.

Shannon Fitzgerald, Executive Director states: “I am thrilled with two new funding sources for our important education programs that are now reaching more families in our community than ever – and can only continue to impact lives through art with support such as this.  The Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation has provide the museum support before, but it is terrific that they specifically wanted to sponsor our newly invigorated Free Family Funday for 2017 – as our most diverse and growing education initiative- It is an honor to have the The Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation be our lead sponsor.” She continues, “it is also exciting that our leaders from our outstanding City appointed Mennello Museum of American Art Board of Trustees have raised $5,000 at this year’s Indie FolkFest and generously committed the funds to support all of our family friendly education programs to include family events, film screenings, school bus funds, artist supplies and more!  This board is generous in vision and action and we are grateful for their leadership in giving back to the community and the museum.

Every second Sunday of the month, The Mennello Museum of American Art opens their doors to the community, and offers all families a welcoming space to learn and create together — Free Family Funday. Trained docents lead museum guests on fast-paced, exciting tours focusing their tutelage on bringing the art in the galleries to life, engaging visitors to look closer and then to try for themselves. Where rigor meets fun, arts projects are designed for guests to create their own masterpieces, to hang on the walls or display on a pedestal at home, using some of the same methods as the celebrated artists in The Museum. Each project lesson plan has the ability to be modifiable for all ages and expertise levels — truly fun for the whole family.

Gretchen Hahn, Board of Trustees Chair, states, “As stewards of the museum, The Board of Trustees is pleased and proud to make a substantial gift to the museum that will continue the mission of enhancing outreach and education for the residents of Orlando.” She continues, “As the event grows each year, so will our contribution to the museum.”

Free Family Funday at The Mennello Museum emphasizes artistic practice, multiple art making methods, and art historical education to evoke conversations about art experienced on the occasion of the visit and that reaches us every day. This programming realizes the Museum’s mission and vision by bringing quality arts education to everyone, serving as a special resource and artistic outlet for the community, and proving that The Mennello Museum is a place for all to enjoy. Every Free Family Funday project is a companion to the exhibitions, truly stimulating a connection with the work, and making each artist and their motivations more attainable. In the summer of 2016, Pop Art Prints visitors pulled their own screen print versions of Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and Allan D’Arcangelo, used Ben Day Dots to create their own Roy Lichtenstein comic-meets-high art pieces that were then framed and matted, composed collages in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg – to be a witness, and tell a story of their time in history, and rolled block prints as exciting and impactful as Robert Indiana, James, Rosenquist, and Jasper Johns. The success of the printing programming was followed in three-dimensions by projects that provoked material manipulation in honor of the Three American Sculptors, The Mennello Museum’s 2016 Fall exhibition. Sculptures of ideas and energy were conceived and constructed using only the lightest paper in the spirit of Alice Aycock’s heavy-metal architectural forms, the earth in the form of clay was pushed, pulled, and scored to form literal vessels like Barbara Sorensen’s art, and representation and found materials were employed to explore the line and form of Deborah Butterfield’s horses.

Educational programming at The Mennello Museum of American Art delivers access to captivating American art of all genres through permanent collections, as well as renowned curated and temporary exhibitions. In addition to most popular program, Free Family Funday, the museum brings art studies that present the permanent collection of outstanding Earl Cunningham paintings directly into the classroom through Art Trunks on The Go: Safe Place Space. The Mennello Museum of American art also works closely with Women in the Arts for Community School of the Arts at The Museum, hosts monthly art-focused film screenings, and is re-launching a summer camp program this year, An Artful Summer: Camp at the Museum. Whether through lectures given by world-renowned and established artists the likes of Alice Aycock and Bo Bartlett, docent guided tours for school aged groups or seniors, or Boy and Girl Scout badge fulfillments with arts projects, The Mennello Museum’s workshops and special programming are designed to make personal connections to exhibitions and exploration of artistic methods. We endeavor to engage all individuals who come through the doors in participatory learning of the visual arts. We seek to advance their confidence in discussions around the exhibitions and inspire creativity in personal life and art making.

IMAGES:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8k7l011ueohsbiz/BB%20The%20American-2.jpg?dl=0

About the Musuem
The Mennello Museum of American Art, established in November 1998, is owned and operated by the City of Orlando. This intimate cultural gem located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, is just minutes from downtown Orlando, and is housed in what was once the private home of Howard Phillips, son of local philanthropist Dr. P. Phillips. Among the Mennello Museum’s many treasures is the permanent collection of paintings by self-taught artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), which was generously donated from the collection of Michael A. Mennello and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello.

On view now through May 7, BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST. This exhibition presents large-scale oil paintings that are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant American Realist painters of his generation.

The Mennello Museum is located at 900 E. Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803.

mennellomuseum.org · facebook.com/mennellomuseum
instagram.com/mennellomuseum · twitter.com/mennellomuseum

The Mennello Museum of American Art is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.

Download this Press Release.

Francesca Ascione
Marketing & Graphic Design Coordinator
The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando
francesca.ascione@cityoforlando.net
407.246.4113

Orlando, FL — April 5, 2017

About the Musuem
The Mennello Museum of American Art, established in November 1998, is owned and operated by the City of Orlando. This intimate cultural gem located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, is just minutes from downtown Orlando, and is housed in what was once the private home of Howard Phillips, son of local philanthropist Dr. P. Phillips. Among the Mennello Museum’s many treasures is the permanent collection of paintings by self-taught artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), which was generously donated from the collection of Michael A. Mennello and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello.

On view now through May 7, BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST. This exhibition presents large-scale oil paintings that are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant American Realist painters of his generation.

The Mennello Museum is located at 900 E. Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803.

mennellomuseum.org · facebook.com/mennellomuseum
instagram.com/mennellomuseum · twitter.com/mennellomuseum

The Mennello Museum of American Art is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.

Download this Media Alert.

Francesca Ascione
Marketing & Graphic Design Coordinator
The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando
francesca.ascione@cityoforlando.net
407.246.4113

Orlando, FL — March 28, 2017

Made possible by a generous gift from the William E. Heyler Trust and the Friends of The Mennello Museum.

The Mennello Museum of American Art is pleased to announce the acquisition of Bo Bartlett’s The American (2016), an important painting by American artist Bo Bartlett from our current solo exhibition with the artist, BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST. The painting, The American, 2016 is a stunning example of the artist’s continuing ability to create grandiose images with proactive ideas relevant to our larger society, yet still rooted in history and literature. The American is one of Bartlett’s many inspiring new works.  Based on Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, The American stands to invigorate art history in its ambiguous and compelling power as we consider our changing world, societal navigation, debates and divides. This acquisition is made possible by the generosity of The Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art and a gift from The William E. Heyler Trust. Bo Bartlett keeps realism relevant and narrative enthralling in contemporary art discourse, and now at The Mennello Museum too!

The exhibition, BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST, opened January 27 and runs through May 7. It features The American alongside other new works, as well as works from two decades ago. This exhibition presents large-scale oil paintings are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant American Realist and American Figurative painters of his generation.

Shannon Fitzgerald, Executive Director of The Mennello Museum of American Art states: “Acquiring this painting is enormously important to the museum, especially where we are in our life cycle in defining what an American Art museum can be, and our current thinking about advancing not only our exhibitions but our collection wisely. Collecting from our original exhibitions is a good model for us, and to move forward with the work of Bo Bartlett is significant. His work is relevant and resonates with our community; it is an honor to add Bo Bartlett to our collection and be able to share art history in the making with our audiences.”

Bo Bartlett is widely renowned for his multi-layered, complex image making rooted in narrative, storytelling, art history, literature, poetry, and everyday life. Bartlett works in a long-established tradition in American painting that stretches from Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer to Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth.  Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s land and people to depict the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary. Of Bartlett’s work, Andrew Wyeth wrote, “Bo Bartlett is very American.  He is fresh, he’s gifted, and he’s what we need in this country.  Bo is one of the very few I feel this strongly about.”

Additionally with references to other American giants—George Caleb Bingham, Robert Henri, John Singer Sargent, Thomas Cole, and Norman Rockwell—Bartlett likewise creates an image of time, place and individuality.  And to add to this lineage, Bartlett’s work stunningly communicates a command of space, grace in gesture, and power in grandeur akin to European painters of history—Goya, Delacroix, and Gericault.  Bartlett hones figurative expression beyond history, painting, imitation and exactitude, to place it in a highly conceptual endurance field; to play out, witness, and remember. His protagonists are of this world, observed in time—lone, isolated, afraid, confident, determined, longing—and rendered larger than life in a manifestly American geography, yet are distilled in a quiet anticipation.

Bartlett was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where realist principles must be grasped before modernist ventures are encouraged. He pushes the boundaries of the realist tradition with his multilayered imagery―accessible and complex at once. Life, death, transformation, memory, and confrontation coexist easily in his world. Family and friends are the cast of characters who appear in his otherworldly narrative works. Tom Butler, museum director and Columbus, Georgia native states: “Although the scenes are set around Bartlett’s childhood home in Georgia, his island summer home in Maine, his home in Pennsylvania or the surroundings of his studio and residence in Washington State, they represent a deeper, mythical concept of the archetypal, universal home.” His work is in the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Seattle Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Columbus Museum of Art, among others.  Bartlett currently lives and paints on an island off the coast of Maine in the summer and in his hometown of Columbus, Georgia in the winter.

Of Bartlett’s recent solo exhibition (June 2016) at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, of which The American debuted, John Seed wrote in the Huffington Post, “Bo Bartlett: The Intermediary”:

 A politically progressive painter born and raised in a conservative southern state (Georgia), Bartlett has always believed in the power of art to ameliorate differences and unify opposing ideas. To see it otherwise is to feign sophistication as a cover for cynicism: I believe in the power of Art to transform lives. My hope is to find connective tissue between opposing ideas to try to help find common ground, to show that we are all in this together. If we can move beyond the cynicism, the dualistic thinking, all the rhetoric and posturing, if we can listen to others, reach out and find the things we have in common with others we’ll start to resolve some of these conflicts that appear irreconcilable. I’ve seen Republicans and Democrats, the wealthy and the homeless, people of all races and genders, standing shoulder-to-shoulder appreciating the wonder of a work of Art.

Shannon Fitzgerald, Executive Director, states, “I am delighted to share Bo Bartlett’s compelling work with our community, his work is provocative and timely in ways that brilliantly reveal in direct and non-linear narratives; what is not immediate fascinates and lingers in the imagination.  We are presenting work that spans two decades and considers notions of family, the American South, the mighty ocean, time, life, and death. Through landscape and portraiture, innovation and scale, Bartlett’s distinct realism is grand, epic, and meaningful as we contemplate our own narratives and place within our vast world.  Bartlett’s characters convey a range of emotions, fortitude, resolve, and determination that prompt empathy whether physical, psychological, or instinctively.”  She continues, “There is something in his paintings for everyone.  They awe as objects, in subject matter and with a humanity that resonates.”

BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST is organized by The Mennello Museum of American Art and curated by Shannon Fitzgerald, Executive Director, The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando.  It is organized concurrently with Orlando Museum of Art’s presentation of the exhibition The Wyeth’s and American Artists in Maine: Selections from the Farnsworth Art Museum.  This occasion provides the opportunity to follow a distinctive American art history, an artistic legacy and trajectory that continues, and one that is so compelling in Bartlett’s astonishing oeuvre.  This connective examination yields the rare opportunity to position a contemporary artist’s work in the context of his predecessors and peers working in the long-standing tradition of American realism.  Bo Bartlett keeps realism relevant and narrative enthralling in contemporary art discourse.

PLEASE NOTE THE BELOW REQUIRED CREDITS FOR IMAGE:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8k7l011ueohsbiz/BB%20The%20American-2.jpg?dl=0

Bo Bartlett, The American, 2016, 82 x 100 inches, oil on linen. Collection of The Mennello Museum of American Art; acquisition purchase by The Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art and The William E. Heyler Trust. 2017.

About the Musuem
The Mennello Museum of American Art, established in November 1998, is owned and operated by the City of Orlando. This intimate cultural gem located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, is just minutes from downtown Orlando, and is housed in what was once the private home of Howard Phillips, son of local philanthropist Dr. P. Phillips. Among the Mennello Museum’s many treasures is the permanent collection of paintings by self-taught artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), which was generously donated from the collection of Michael A. Mennello and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello.

On view now through May 7, BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST. This exhibition presents large-scale oil paintings that are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant American Realist painters of his generation.

The Mennello Museum is located at 900 E. Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803.

mennellomuseum.org · facebook.com/mennellomuseum
instagram.com/mennellomuseum · twitter.com/mennellomuseum

The Mennello Museum of American Art is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.

Download this Press Release.

Francesca Ascione
Marketing & Graphic Design Coordinator
The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando
francesca.ascione@cityoforlando.net
407.246.4113

Orlando, FL — March 16, 2017

The Mennello Museum of American Art is pleased to announce the loan extension of Alice Aycock’s large-scale works in our Marylin L. Mennello Sculpture Garden through September 2018, and Aycock’s subsequent visit to the museum for an artist talk on March 22.

Shannon Fitzgerald, Executive Director, shares: “I am thrilled to announce that The Mennello Museum of American Art will be able to share the stunning Alice Aycock sculptures with Orlando audiences and visitors for one more year!  Alice’s work has resonated with so many in our community and people are delighted to experience such world class sculpture in such a beautiful setting.”

The Mennello Museum inaugurated Grounds for Exhibitions in September 2016 with a year-long loan of two sculptures, Waltzing Matilda and Twin Vortexes, by American sculptor Alice Aycock. The beautiful works were originally part of series of seven sculptures in Aycock’s significant outdoor exhibition on Park Avenue in Manhattan, Park Avenue Paper Chase. Grounds for Exhibition will continue to feature large-scale sculpture exhibitions by nationally renowned American artists who otherwise would not be shared with Orlando audiences.

On the activation of our Grounds for Exhibitions in 2016, Shannon Fitzgerald stated: “It is thrilling to inaugurate this outdoor exhibition program with such beautiful work by Alice Aycock, one of America’s most recognized and respected sculptors of her generation. I think visitors will delight in experiencing the stunning sculptures nestled in our lakeside landscape that challenges perspective, materiality, whimsy, and nature—in all its power and fragility.  She continues, “This is an extraordinary opportunity for our community to contemplate the vital role art has and the impact it can have when shared in the Public realm.”

Artist Talk: Alice Aycock
March 22  ●  6 p.m.

We invite you to join us on Wednesday, March 22, to meet the artist behind the incredible sculptures. The Mennello Museum will be hosting an artist talk with Alice Aycock at 6 p.m. Enjoy a complimentary glass of champagne while Alice speaks about her influences and highlights of her work in sculpture and drawing over her career from the early 1970s to present.

Champagne provided by The Fresh Market Mills Park.

Admission 
Members: $5
Guests: $10

PLEASE NOTE THE BELOW REQUIRED CREDITS FOR IMAGES.

IMAGES: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mgw86udtefb3mmp/AACgZFioDFbuyJOl0HPQVOjxa?dl=0

Alice Aycock, Waltzing Matilda, 2014, Reinforced Fiberglass, 15′ high x 15′ wide x 18′ long, courtesy Alice Aycock Studio, New York.

Alice Aycock, Twin Vortexes, 2014, aluminum, 12′ high x 12′ wide x 18′ long, courtesy Alice Aycock Studio, New York.

Alice Aycock Photo. Photo:  Kristine Larsen

The Mennello Museum of American Art, established in November 1998, is owned and operated by the City of Orlando. This intimate cultural gem located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, is just minutes from downtown Orlando, and is housed in what was once the private home of Howard Phillips, son of local philanthropist Dr. P. Phillips. Among the Mennello Museum’s many treasures is the permanent collection of paintings by self-taught artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), which was generously donated from the collection of Michael A. Mennello and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello.

On view now through May 7, BO BARTLETT: AMERICAN ARTIST. This exhibition presents large-scale oil paintings that are figurative, psychologically imbued, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully sublime by one of the most significant American Realist painters of his generation.

The Mennello Museum is located at 900 E. Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803.

mennellomuseum.org · facebook.com/mennellomuseum
instagram.com/mennellomuseum · twitter.com/mennellomuseum

The Mennello Museum of American Art is generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Additional funding is provided by Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.

Download this press release.

Francesca Ascione
Marketing & Graphic Design Coordinator
The Mennello Museum of American Art and Public Art, City of Orlando
francesca.ascione@cityoforlando.net
407.246.4113