From Homer to Hopper: American Watercolor Masterworks from the Currier Museum of Art
Organized by the Currier Museum of Art
March 6, 2010 - June 7, 2010

This exhibition will feature extraordinary works by such nationally known masters as Winslow Homer, Maurice Prendergast, Childe Hassam, Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield, John Marin, Charles Sheeler, Stuart Davis, and Andrew Wyeth.

Drawn from the impressive collection the Currier has built over its 80-year history, these watercolors have not been exhibited as a group for two decades because of the fragile nature of the medium. The exhibition will include about seventy works that trace the history of watercolor over the last 175 years. A strong representation of work by important New Hampshire artists will range from portraits by nineteenth-century itinerant painter Joseph H. Davis to landscapes by New Hampshire Living Treasure award winner John Hatch and abstract compositions by contemporary painter and sculptor Varujan Boghosian.

This exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

_{Image credits:  Edward Hopper, House on Middle Street (Gloucester), 1924, Museum Purchase: Gift of the Friends, 1962.14 and Winslow Homer, The North Woods (Playing Him), 1894, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frederic C. Curtiss, 1960.13.}

Spotlight New England
George Sherwood: In Delicate Balance
Organized by the Currier Museum of Art
May 29 – September 6, 2010

Rapid technological and industrial innovation defined much of the twentieth century, and early on, sculptors reacted with experiments in materials and forms, including moving parts. The sculpture of Massachusetts artist George Sherwood has its roots in this history, with delicate constructions of highly polished stainless steel and other metals engineered to gracefully and subtly respond to changing environmental conditions. With a recent installation on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in Boston, Sherwood is an accomplished artist from the region, and honorably continues the Spotlight New England series, initiated in 2008. 

While typically shown outdoors, Sherwood’s sculpture exhibited inside the Winter Garden and Putnam Gallery is an opportunity to focus on the work’s finely engineered mechanics. Alexander Calder’s mobile in the nearby contemporary gallery and Mark di Suvero’s kinetic sculpture Origins in Zachos Court—both part of the Currier’s Permanent Collection— form a conversation with Sherwood’s work and create a context and history for kinetic practices.   In Delicate Balance includes an outdoor installation and features two new sculptures for the inaugural display within the Winter Garden.

This exhibition is supported by David and Barbara Roby and by the Fleisher Family Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

_{Image credits:  George Sherwood,Wind Orchid (plait leaf var.), 2009, Stainless steel; Steel Life 1 (detail, in-progress), 2009-10 Stainless steel}

Jon Brooks: A Collaboration with Nature
Organized by the Currier Museum of Art
March - June, 2011

New Hampshire wood artists and Manchester native Jon Brooks (born 1944) has been a leading member of the studio furniture movement for the last 40 years. A sculptor and furniture maker, Brooks is known for the innovative quality and poetic imagery of his work, as well as for his exploration of the line between function and art.  His work is inspired by and constructed from the sinuous and contorted branches and trees that he harvests from the forest surrounding his New Hampshire home. Although rigorous in design and construction, his furniture and sculpture has a whimsical and playful quality enhanced by the woods natural grain and the use of richly colored stains and paints. This will be the first retrospective exhibition of his career and it will be accompanied by the first catalogue devoted to his work. 

Brooks is a graduate of the Currier Museum Art Center and the Rochester Institute of Technology where he earned B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees, Brooks has taught at Haystack, Penland, and the University of Tasmania. He has held artist residencies at Alfred University, Rhode Island School of Design, Philadelphia College of Art, and New Zealand's L'Etacq College. Brooks is one of the founding members of the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association, a group recognized national for its innovative designs and outstanding craftsmanship.

The Currier Museum of Art owns four works by Brooks and his furniture is included in collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Art and Design, NY.  Brooks has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad including the "Craft Today, USA" European Tour and, in 1997, "Celebrating American Craft" at the Danish Museum of Decorative Art, Copenhagen, Denmark. He has received awards from the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen and, in 1996, was honored with a New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Fellowship.

Images: True Loves Blue, Jon Brooks, 2000. Georgia, Jon Brooks, 1991.