If you’re a fan of the Wyeths, plan to visit Rockland’s Farnsworth Museum for two Wyeth family exhibits. One focuses on 27 major works received as a bequest from Betsy Wyeth. The other features five Andrew Wyeth works never previously exhibited in public. Both open on May 15 and continue through March 27, 2022.
Andrew Wyeth, Robert Indiana, and notable Maine women are featured in three other upcoming exhibitions.
Wyeth works showcased in three exhibitions
The exhibit Betsy’s Gift: The Works of N.C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth Betsy’s Gift shares the 27 Wyeth paintings Betsy Wyeth gave to the Farnsworth. Among the highlights: Room After Room and Geraniums, two well-known watercolors by Andrew Wyeth featuring the Olson House; Fisherman’s Family, an N.C. Wyeth oil painting; and Islander, Jamie Wyeth’s famed Monhegan oil painting.
The complementary exhibit, Betsy Wyeth: Partner and Muse, features Andrew Wyeth’s portraits of his wife, Betsy. She appeared in his paintings from the summer they met in 1939 until the summer before the artist’s death in 2009. Notable works in this show are Maga’s Daughter, an iconic tempera exhibited in Maine for the first time, and the first-time public showing of several watercolors and drawings of Betsy. Betsy James Wyeth passed away last spring at the age of 98.
“The Farnsworth’s relationship with Andrew and Betsy goes back to 1944, four years before the museum opened its doors to the public,” commented Farnsworth Board President Gerry Isom. “The museum purchased six works at that time, from a still relatively unknown Andrew Wyeth, as its collection was just taking shape. Betsy’s ongoing support of the Farnsworth was unwavering throughout her life, and we owe her an immense debt of gratitude.”
A third Wyeth-related exhibit, George Tice/Andrew Wyeth: Parallel Visions, opens at the museum’s Wyeth Center on June 12. Over many decades, nationally renowned photographer George Tice and artist Andrew Wyeth were drawn to Maine. Both were inspired by the state’s past, the sense of timelessness, and the enduring qualities of honor and dignity in an honest day’s work. This exhibition, the first to show photographer George Tice’s Maine work in the place that inspired it and the first to pair his works with those of Andrew Wyeth, opens June 12.
Women of Vision honors 2021 Maine in America Award winners
Women of Vision, opening on April 17, celebrates 13 remarkable women who have made lasting contributions to Maine’s culture: photographer Berenice Abbott, businesswoman Linda Bean, painter Katherine Bradford, philanthropist Edith Dixon, museum founder Lucy Farnsworth, photographer Cig Harvey, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, sculptor Louise Nevelson, philanthropist Elizabeth Noyce, basket maker and Passamaquoddy civic leader Molly Neptune Parker, women’s advocate and philanthropist Maurine Rothschild, arts and education champion Phyllis Wyeth, and artist Marguerite Zorach. All receive the 2021 Maine in America Award during a museum ceremony in July.
Robert Indiana prints and silkscreens on view
Robert Indiana: The Hartley Elegies, opening on May 25, features 10 silkscreen prints by Robert Indiana (1928–2018), one of America’s best-known painters and sculptors of the Pop Art generation. Created between 1989 and 1994, The Hartley Elegies comprise these prints and 18 related paintings inspired by the work of the prominent American modernist Marsden Hartley (1877–1946).
According to info supplied by the museum, the 10 large-scale silkscreen prints are a visual poem on the two artists’ shared interests in radical formal vocabularies and their innovative combinations of words and numbers into their boldly colored geometric compositions.
