TRUNK, JR. ART EXHIBIT PRESS RELEASE
August 10, 2009
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Molly Honan
617-293-5086
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EMMANUEL COLLEGE TO SHOWCASE WORK OF AMERICAN MODERNIST HERMAN TRUNK, JR.
Exhibit will highlight artist's expression of faith
BOSTON - Emmanuel College will host a six-week long art exhibition titled Herman Trunk: Catholic Modernist, showcasing the work of the early 20th-century modern artist and examining the relationship between his artistic production and his Catholic faith, on view from September 8th to October 22nd. The exhibition will be held in the Lillian Immig Gallery in Emmanuel's Cardinal Cushing Library and hours will be Monday-Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Emmanuel will hold an opening reception from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on September 17th. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.
Herman Trunk was a member of an important group of New York modernists experimenting in abstraction between the wars. Like many artists from this group, Trunk was recognized for his work during the 1920s and 30s, but his legacy was lost in more permanent constructions of the history of American art. Rather than demonstrate Trunk's connection to American modernism, which has previously been explored and is clearly evident in even a cursory examination of his work, this exhibition will consider Trunk's unique vision as an American modernist through the lens of his Catholic faith.
To complement the Herman Trunk: Catholic Modernist exhibition, there will be a panel discussion on Early American Modernism and Religion on October 3rd in the Janet M. Daley Library Lecture Hall at Emmanuel College. Distinguished scholars in the field of Early American Modernism will participate.
The schedule is as follows:
10:00am Opening Remarks
Fr. Thomas Leclerc, MS, Associate Professor and Chair of Religious Studies Dept., Emmanuel College
Dr. Cynthia Fowler, Associate Professor of Art, Emmanuel College
10:15am Anarchy, Abstraction, and Catholic Modernism
Timothy Andrus, Ph.D. Candidate, Virginia Commonwealth University
10:45am Traces of the Spiritual: Catholicism, Modernism and the Still Life
Dena Gilby, Ph.D. Professor of Art History, Endicott College
11:15am Closing the Divide Between Christianity and Modernism: Christian Themes in the Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe and Joseph Stella
Herbert H. Hartel Jr., Ph.D. Art Historian and Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
11:45am Why is this Mural Unlike Every Other Mural? Passover, Zakhor and Ben Shahn's Murals for the Jersey Homesteads
Diana Linden, Ph.D. Brooklyn Museum
12:15pm Break for Lunch
1:30pm ‘Forging' an ‘Authentic' Indian Art in the 1930s: Studio-Style Depictions of Native Amercican Spirtiual Traditions
Jo Ortel, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Art History, Beloit College
2:00pm Laying the Groundwork: Mystical Modernism in 1930s America
Valerie Hellstein, Ph.D. Candidate, Stony Brook University; Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
2:30pm The Spirit in the Machine: Jane Heap, the Gurdjieff Group and the Machine-Age Exposition of 1927
Kristina Wilson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Art History, Clark University
3:00pm Roundtable Discussion on Religion and American Modernist Art
3:45pm Concluding Remarks
4:00pm Reception in the Lillian Immig Gallery
Free and open to the public. For more information contact Cynthia Fowler at fowlecy@emmanuel.edu, or 617-975-9110.
