Spotlight on the Collection | Montclair Art Museum

Intro Text

MAM’s bimonthly series, Spotlight on the Collection, highlights artworks from the permanent collection and scholarship by MAM staff.

Image					Conversation (Mount Hope) (2007) by Marie Watt Marie Watt stitched strips of bright wool blankets into a Möbius-like loop (a surface with only one side and only one edge), a form that demonstrates both continuity and change.
Image					Orange (2004) by Ellsworth Kelly Kelly was influenced by the late collages of Henri Matisse, whose work the artist saw in Paris in 1950. The flat, silhouetted, and isolated form that dominates this print called Orange suggests Kelly’s appreciation of Matisse’s boldly simplified shapes in his cut paper collages of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Image					Mt. Rushmore (Nieces & Nephew) (2020) by Caren King Choi New Jersey resident Caren King Choi is a Chinese-Taiwanese-American artist, illustrator, and writer. Her artwork, which focuses on issues such as representation and family, has been included in exhibitions at the Newark Arts Festival, Express Newark, and the Newark Museum of Art.
Image					The Little Lake (1927) by Joseph Stella Joseph Stella was a pioneering modernist; his dynamic, kaleidoscopic paintings of the new urban-industrial landscape are among the earliest Futurist works completed by an American artist. The dark, sensual colors and flat, simplified forms (in The Little Lake) are typical of Stella’s work from this period, which postdates his Futurist work.
Image					Wooden Owl (1991) by Cheryl Laemmle Wooden Owl (1991) by the American contemporary surrealist painter Cheryl Laemmle (b. 1947), was given to the Montclair Art Museum in 2008 by the renowned collectors Herbert and Dorothy Vogel. MAM was one of the American art museums that received works from the Vogels as part of their “Fifty Works for Fifty States” initiative in partnership with the National Gallery of Art.
Image					Under Construction (1934–5) by Theodore Roszak Theodore Roszak was one of the pioneers of constructed sculpture in America during the 1930s. A highly innovative artist who worked in a variety of mediums, Roszak drew on a wide range of interests, from technology and machine aesthetics to cosmology and music.
Image					Deliverance Disco (1987) by George McNeil This work is a bold, refreshing painting filled with raucous colors and forms that are about to explode out of the picture plane. Push and pull, a term used to explain the ability of color combinations to recede and move forward within a picture, is clearly visible between the back and blue background and the two figures that fill most of the composition.
Image					Toy Animal (1947) by William Baziotes William Baziotes was a key figure in the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in New York during the early 1940s. Prompted by Surrealist émigré Roberto Matta Echaurren, Baziotes and other colleagues, including Motherwell, Lee Krasner, and Jackson Pollock, he began to experiment with spontaneous methods of painting.
Image					Euclidean Gris Gris (Tropic of Entropy) (2019) by Todd Gray Dividing his time between Los Angeles and Ghana, Todd Gray uses photography, performance, and sculpture to investigate the dynamics of power in relationship to the African Diaspora.
Image					Untitled (2020) by vanessa german german's primarily female power figures explore themes of strength, love, and justice while engaging with the complicated history of race in the United States.
Image					Three Witnesses (1931-2) by Ben Shahn Absorbed by social and political concerns, Ben Shahn, the twentieth century New York City-based artist, often addressed important events through his art.
Image					Day in Midwinter (1945) by Charles E. Burchfield Like Henry David Thoreau, whose writings inspired him, Burchfield saw nature as a source of spirituality and was especially awed by the changing of the seasons.
Image					Skunk Cabbage (1927) by Georgia O’Keeffe In the painting Skunk Cabbage from the 1920s, Georgia O’Keefe created an immersive experience of nature through the simple combination of thick green lines, yellow accent highlights, and maroon circles and semi-circles.
Image					Crown for the Victor (1896) by William Couper With Crown for the Victor (Beauty’s Wreath for Valor’s Brow), Couper perfected his neo-classical style by crafting an ornate Greek maiden weaving a crown of olive branches for an Olympic victor.
Image					Misty and Joey at Hornstrasse, Berlin (1992) by Nan Goldin Simultaneously intimate and iconic, Goldin’s photo of her friends and drag queens, Misty and Joey, is part of a series of photographs capturing the artist’s friends and lovers navigating love, sex, and relationships in the era of AIDS.
Image					Camera Obscura Image of Brookline View, in Brady’s Room (1992) by Abelardo Morell For more than 30 years, Cuban-American photographer Abelardo Morell has captured the magic of photography through the camera obscura. Since the early 1990s, Morell has transformed rooms, beginning with his home in Brookline, Massachusetts and expanding to places far-flung across the globe.
Image					Doll (1941) by Artist Once Known (Diné) This doll is wearing customary Navajo attire that reflects cross-cultural histories of dress. With it, the artist is asserting hózhó (beauty, harmony, and balance) and the right to self-representation.
Image					Borrowing Animals (1970) by Jim Dine Employing recognizable motifs, including tools, clothing, and stylized hearts, Dine produces an array of colorful paintings, collages, prints, and sculptures. His works draw inspiration from popular culture and commercial imagery, transforming ordinary items into extraordinary works of fine art.