Life Cycles: The Charles E. Burchfield Collection
Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)
Studio Doodling No. 1, c. 1966
Pencil on paper, 10 1/2 x 17 1/4 inches
Burchfield Penney Art Center
After a decade of one-person exhibitions in New York, Cleveland, Chicago and London, Burchfield's work gained significant attention when he became represented by The Galleries of Frank K. M. Rehn in New York City in 1929. There he became one of a group of artists, including Edward Hopper and Reginald Marsh, who were among the most famous American artists ofthe 1930s and 1940s. During his lifetime, Burchfield's work was shown in numerous significant group and solo exhibitions at major institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Carnegie Institute, and the Phillips Memorial Gallery, among others.
PUBLICATION:
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center has published a catalogue of its entire Burchfield collection that accompanies the exhibition. The fully-illustrated book includes essays by guest curator Nancy Weekly; Robert Slammon, former researcher for the Burchfield-Penney; Charles C. Eldredge, Hall Distinguished Professor of American Art at the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas; and the late J. Benjamin Townsend, editor and author of the seminal book on Burchfield's journals. Paper; 347 pages; 32 color plates; 617 halftones.
ORGANIZATION AND CIRCULATION:
Life Cycles: The Charles E. Burchfield Collection was organized by the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College, New York, and is circulated by The American Federation of Arts. Major support for the exhibition and catalogue was generously provided by the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation and the James Carey Evens Endowment. Additional funds were provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. The exhibition is a project of ART ACCESS II, a program of the AFA with major support from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund.
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS:
The American Federation of Arts is the nation's oldest and most comprehensive non-profit art museum service organization. Founded in 1909, the AFA provides its more than 500 member institutions with traveling art exhibitions and educational, professional and technical support programs developed in collaboration with the museum community. Through these programs the AFA seeks to strengthen the ability of museums to enrich the public's experience and understanding of art.
BURCHFIELD-PENNEY ART CENTER:
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center was established in 1966
on the campus of Buffalo State College in honor of renowned watercolorist
Charles E. Burchfield. The Center has the world's largest, most comprehensive
collection of Burchfield's works and archival materials, as well as more
than 5,400 works by Western New York artists spanning 1875 to the present.
The collection of Burchfield's work was augmented in 1994 with a major gift
of key drawings and paintings from Charles Rand Penney. Because Burchfield
has a deep and abiding interest in the arts and education, the Center has
become a multifaceted cultural forum for the literary arts and for music.
Through its educational programs and archives, the museum also serves as
a resource center for studies in American art.
Images and text courtesy of Burchfield-Penney Art Center and The American Federation of Arts.
Search for more articles and essays on American art in Resource Library. See America's Distinguished Artists for biographical information on historic artists.
This page was originally published in 1997 in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information.
Copyright 2012 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.