Brian Alfred
BRIAN ALFRED | PALMER MUSEUM OF ART
MADE IN PA
1 JUNE - 1 DECEMBER 2024
Brian Alfred (American, b. 1974) The Palmer, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 44 x 60 inches. Palmer Museum of Art, Gift of Miles McEnery Gallery © Brian Alfred
ROOTED IN REALISM
Rooted in Realism acknowledges the long history of academic training rooted in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), the first and oldest art school and art museum in the United States. Included in this section are significant canvases by Pennsylvania natives Andrew Wyeth, Philip Pearlstein, and Penn State alumnus Brian Alfred (’97) that demonstrate the enduring appeal of painting from life. A powerful self-portrait by PAFA faculty member Elizabeth Osborne and an evocative still-life by Annville-based artist G. Daniel Massad underscore the modern formal sensibility informing the works in this section. Sculptor Amber Cowan, based in Philadelphia, pays homage to the history of glassmaking in the state in her ornate wall relief of pressed-glass objects, both found and fabricated, that conjure the reality of domestic life and utilitarian concerns.
In celebration of the opening of the new Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State, the museum is organizing a major inaugural special exhibition, MADE IN PA. This ambitious show signals the museum’s revisioning of its mission, vision, and values grounded in Penn State’s land-grant mission of educating students from around the world and supporting individuals and communities across the Commonwealth and beyond.
MADE IN PA highlights post-1945 paintings, sculpture, mixed-media assemblages, and installations by artists who hail from Pennsylvania or who have made their homes and sustained their careers in the Keystone State. The three generations of artists included in the exhibition speak to the Commonwealth’s long history of academic training and innovative artistic practice, the complicated legacies of its varied geographies and socio-political realities, and the hybrid identities and potent cultural exchanges through time and space that characterize the work of Pennsylvania artists today.
MADE IN PA features works of art drawn from the Palmer’s permanent collection along with selected loans from private collections, galleries, and museums across the Commonwealth. The approximately thirty-two works in the exhibition are organized into five thematic sections: Rooted in Realism, Pennsylvania Modern, The Land and its Legacies, Pop and Politics, and PA NOW.
MADE IN PA opens in the spring of 2024 in the Museum’s new state-of-the-art facility at the Arboretum at Penn State and is curated by Erin Coe, director, and Joyce Robinson, assistant director of the Palmer Museum of Art.
In celebration of the opening of the new Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State, the museum is organizing a major inaugural special exhibition, MADE IN PA. This ambitious show signals the museum’s revisioning of its mission, vision, and values grounded in Penn State’s land-grant mission of educating students from around the world and supporting individuals and communities across the Commonwealth and beyond.
MADE IN PA highlights post-1945 paintings, sculpture, mixed-media assemblages, and installations by artists who hail from Pennsylvania or who have made their homes and sustained their careers in the Keystone State. The three generations of artists included in the exhibition speak to the Commonwealth’s long history of academic training and innovative artistic practice, the complicated legacies of its varied geographies and socio-political realities, and the hybrid identities and potent cultural exchanges through time and space that characterize the work of Pennsylvania artists today.
MADE IN PA features works of art drawn from the Palmer’s permanent collection along with selected loans from private collections, galleries, and museums across the Commonwealth. The approximately thirty-two works in the exhibition are organized into five thematic sections: Rooted in Realism, Pennsylvania Modern, The Land and its Legacies, Pop and Politics, and PA NOW.
MADE IN PA opens in the spring of 2024 in the Museum’s new state-of-the-art facility at the Arboretum at Penn State and is curated by Erin Coe, director, and Joyce Robinson, assistant director of the Palmer Museum of Art.