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South Dakota Art Museum Receives Grant to Research Harvey Dunn

 

The South Dakota Art Museum has recently been awarded a $3,015 travel grant from the Museum Loan Network for the purpose of exploring loans of works by Harvey Dunn which are located at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The South Dakota Art Museum is interested in Dunn's World War I illustrations done in France during his commission as a captain with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). Harvey Dunn was one of eight of the nation's foremost illustrators selected to volunteer as the official artists of the AEF. As a group, these artists produced over 700 images for use primarily as historical documentation, as well as, in publicity and propaganda materials. (left: Harvey Dunn (1884-1952), A Driver of Oxen, oil on canvas, 26 x 40 inches, South Dakota Art Museum, 1970.1.16)

Most of these works are included in the National Collections of the Smithsonian Institution. Worked in oil, watercolor, pastel, crayon, and charcoal, Harvey Dunn's wartime illustrations would provide viewers with another dimension of his work. It is the South Dakota Art Museum's intention to borrow these images from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History for a period of at least three years, and to display them on a rotating basis along with works from the permanent Dunn collection held by the Art Museum.

The opportunity for South Dakota Art Museum staff members to travel to Washington, D.C. to initiate this project has been made possible by the Museum Loan Network (MLN) -- the first comprehensive national collection-sharing program -- which stimulates, facilitates, and funds long-term loans of art among U.S. institutions to enhance museums' "permanent" installations. The MLN's Program consists of two complementary components: the MLN Directory, an illustrated online database that includes objects available for long-term loan by museums around the country, and the MLN grant programs, which help realize loans between institutions. Launched in 1995, the MLN is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, which conceived and initiated the program, and is administered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Office of the Arts.

 

Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting the sub-index page for the South Dakota Art Museum in Resource Library Magazine.

For further biographical information on Harvey Dunn please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

rev. 10/18/10

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