Joslyn Art Museum will boldly reopen in 2024.
We are currently closed while we grow and reimagine ourselves.
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New to the Collections: Winter 2023
Simone Leigh's Sphinx
Like much of Simone Leigh’s (American, born 1967) work, Sphinx layers references from across history and cultures. Sphinx maintains the regality of Egypt's Great Sphinx of Giza, but replaces the pharaoh’s head and lion’s body with two recurring motifs in Leigh’s work: an afroed Black woman and a Quonset hut, a prefabricated steel structure mass-produced in America during World War II. Read more.
Pictured left: Simone Leigh (American, born 1967), Sphinx, 2021, bronze and platinum leaf, 48 x 38 x 24 in., Museum purchase with funds from Polina and Robert Schlott and the Rose Marie Baumgarten Art Endowment Fund, 2022.7
Émile-Jean-Horace Vernet's The Duke of Chartres and Pierre-Paul Èdouard Save the Engineer Siret from Drowning on August 3, 1791, in Vendôme
The first work by Vernet to enter Joslyn’s collection, the painting may be contextualized within a notable current in nineteenth-century European art that is well-represented at the Museum: anecdotal and inventive history paintings. In addition to engaging the function of history and history painting in the nineteenth century, Vernet’s painting attests to a neglected biography of a person of color, offering an opportunity for further research into a key figure in French Black history. Read more.
Pictured left: Émile-Jean-Horace Vernet (French, 1789–1863), The Duke of Chartres and Pierre-Paul Èdouard Save the Engineer Siret from Drowning on August 3, 1791, in Vendôme, 1847, oil on canvas, 20 1/4 x 24 1/4 in., Museum purchase with funds from the Jack Drew Acquisition Fund for 18th- and 19th-Century Art, 2022.10.
Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty and Camryn Growing Thunder's Walking This Good Way of Life Together
Walking This Good Way of Life Together is an ornamental horse
collar, or martingale, that pushes the boundaries of traditional Northern Plains art. Created by members of the Growing Thunder Collective, the work won Best of Class in the competitive Beadwork and Quillwork category at the 100th Annual Santa Fe Indian Market. The complex layering and interplay of textures and colors exemplify the artists’ extensive knowledge of natural and trade materials used by Native women on the Northern Plains for centuries. Read more.
Pictured left: Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty (Sisituwa?/Wahpetuwa?/Hohe, born 1969) and Camryn Growing Thunder (Sisituwan/Wahpetuwan/Hohe/Kiowa/Comanche, born 2002), Walking This Good Way of Life Together, 2022, smoked moose hide, rawhide, otter pelt, wool, porcupine quills, antique size-15 beads, French-cut beads, brass beads, brass buttons, brass cones, bells, thimbles, silk ribbon, ermine skin, horse hair, brass sequins, braid binding, and pigment, 60 in. (height), Museum purchase with funds from the Durham Center for Western Studies Art Endowment Fund, 2022.11
Plateau Region, Rawhide Cylinder
Though we do not know the name of the person who made this cylindrical container from buffalo hide, their mastery of the rawhide painting tradition was surely recognized within their community. The fine linework of the painted designs makes it an exceptional work of mid-nineteenth-century Native American painting.
The cylindrical container likely came from the Plateau region, a vast area that extends from the Rocky Mountains in the east to the Cascades in the west and encompasses the Fraser and Columbia River valleys that extend north into British Columbia. Read more.
Pictured left: Plateau Region, Rawhide Cylinder, c. 1875, bison hide and natural and commercial pigments, 20 1/2 x 36 x 5 in., Museum purchase with funds from the Durham Center for Western Studies Art Endowment Fund, 2022.12
Grafton Tyler Brown's Lower Falls and Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, from Hayden Point
Grafton Tyler Brown (American, 1841–1918) was the first African American artist to professionally depict landscapes of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest in the nineteenth century. This important picture illustrates the significant, yet overlooked, role of Black artists in producing imagery that defined the American West. Read more.
Pictured left: Grafton Tyler Brown (American, 1841–1918), Lower Falls and Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, from Hayden Point, 1890, oil on canvas, 21 1/4 x 14 1/4 in., Museum purchase, 2022.9
 Allison Janae Hamilton's
Seven Champions of Peculiar Engagement
During her graduate studies, Allison Janae Hamilton (American, born 1984) came across a photograph (since lost) of Black American soldiers fencing. The artist was struck that these individuals risked their lives to defend their country, yet upon returning home, they found that their station in society had not improved. Hamilton began purchasing vintage metal and leather fencing masks at thrift stores, yard sales, and online. Over time, she noted that the masks took on lives of their own and she began to see them as witnesses, both to the present moment and to historical narratives that she could never fully access. Read more.
Pictured above: Allison Janae Hamilton (American, born 1984), Seven Champions of Peculiar Engagement, 2020, vintage metal and leather fencing masks, rooster feathers, pheasant feathers, guinea fowl feathers, vintage marble grapes, sola wood, horse hair, metal, and resin, dimensions variable, Museum purchase with funds from the Rose Marie Baumgarten Art Endowment Fund, 2022.8.a-g. Photo: Colin Conces
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Titian to Monet: European Paintings from Joslyn Art Museum
Titian to Monet: European Paintings from Joslyn Art Museum marks the first time that Joslyn has loaned a selection of its European paintings as a traveling exhibition. Spanning nearly 500 years, the fifty-two works comprising the exhibition narrate a broad history of European painting from the Italian Renaissance to nineteenth-century French Impressionism.
 The expansive chronological and geographical range includes the most significant periods, schools, and styles of European art history, represented by masterworks by Titian, Veronese, El Greco, Claude Lorrain, Rembrandt, Courbet, Monet, and Pissarro, among others. A highlight of the exhibition is a distinguished group of nineteenth-century French academic paintings, with major works by Breton, Bouguereau, and Gérôme. Outstanding examples of religious, history, portrait, landscape, genre, and still-life painting define artistic movements and embody European social, cultural, and political histories.
Titian to Monet opened at Taubman Museum of Art (Roanoke, Virginia) on October 7, 2022, and continues through January 8, 2023. The exhibition will then travel to Philbrook Museum of Art (Tulsa, Oklahoma), February 17–May 28, 2023, where it will be presented under the title Rembrandt to Monet: 500 Years of European Painting from Joslyn Art Museum.
The touring exhibition is accompanied by the richly illustrated publication, European Paintings and Sculpture from Joslyn Art Museum, written by Taylor J. Acosta, Ph.D., Chief Curator and Willis A. Strauss Curator of European Art, with contributions from noted scholars and specialists of European art history. Masterworks from Joslyn Art Museum’s renowned European collection are illuminated by artist biographies, examinations of practice and technique, and cultural and historical contexts. This publication has been made possible with the generous support of The Hawks Foundation, Gilbert M. and Martha H. Hitchcock Foundation, Joslyn Art Museum Association, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, and an anonymous donor. It is available for purchase online.
Shown Above: A selection of paintings from Joslyn's European collection, on view at Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia
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Art Bridges Collection Loan Partnership
 Joslyn Art Museum has been selected to participate in the first Art Bridges Collection Loan Partnership, an initiative of the Art Bridges Foundation. We are delighted to be a part of this program, which is an outstanding opportunity to add to the enrichment of museum audiences from Iowa to Maine by sharing selections from our galleries. Read more.
Shown above: Rozeal's Smoking Pipe and Pods 11.11 and 12.23: trifecta inclusion, child walking past window heard to say, ‘1st comes...then comes...’ pon farr mountain tops of memories of tomorrows (study), 2013 (center), on loan from Joslyn, through Art Bridges, to the special installation Order / Reorder: Experiments with Collections, through September 3, 2023, at Hudson River Museum.
Courtesy Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York; photo: Steve Paneccasio
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Art Out and About
Joslyn is excited to announce the loan of Wendy Red Star’s (Apsáalooke, born 1981) The Indian Congress (2021) to the 15th Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (February 7–June 11, 2023).
Joslyn is pleased to lend the Museum's 1964 Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917–2000) painting on paper titled Iyo to Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence & the Mbari Club, a traveling exhibition co-organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
A selection of ancient Greek pottery from Joslyn’s distinguished
collection is on loan to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City,
MO, where it is displayed in the temporary installation Between Myth and
Reality: Ancient Greek Vases from Joslyn Art Museum (now through April 29, 2024).
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New to the Collections: Fall 2022
Thomas Hudson's Richard Ray
A gift from longtime Museum member Mary Prioreschi, Richard Ray (1746) was purchased in 1979 by her late husband, Dr. Plinio Prioreschi, a great admirer of British painting. Mary shared that he would be delighted that Richard Ray will be displayed within Joslyn’s gallery of eighteenth-century European art. Read more.
Pictured left: Thomas Hudson (British, 1701–1779), Richard Ray, 1746, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in., Gift of Mary Prioreschi in memory of Dr. Plinio Prioreschi, 2022.5
Michael Goldberg's Miracolo di San Marco
A central figure in Abstract Expressionism, Michael Goldberg (American, 1924–2007) began making large, action-packed paintings in 1950. Miracolo di San Marco (1991) is a gift of Laura and Rick Schrager in memory of Phil Schrager. Read more.
Pictured left: Michael Goldberg (American, 1924–2007), Miracolo di San Marco, 1991, oil, oil stick, and string on canvas, 89 1/2 x 65 1/4 in., Gift of Laura and Rick Schrager in memory of Phil Schrager, 2022.6.1
Terry Winters's Spine
Spine is the first work by Terry Winters (American, born 1949) to enter Joslyn’s collection. It is a gift of Laura and Rick Schrager in memory of Phil Schrager. Read more.
Pictured left: Terry Winters (American, born 1949), Spine, 1980, tempera, wash, crayon, and charcoal on white, wove paper, 30 x 22 in., Gift of Laura and Rick Schrager in memory of Phil Schrager, 2022.6.2
Tim Youd's Willa Cather’s My Ántonia 
In 2013, Tim Youd (American, born 1967) embarked on a ten-year endeavor to retype one hundred novels. For his Nebraska cycle, the artist retyped three novels by Willa Cather over the course of approximately six weeks from April to May 2022 using an Oliver No. 3 typewriter. Read more. Tim Youd (American, born 1967), Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, 2022, typewriter ink on paper, diptych, overall: 17 x 25 in., Museum purchase with funds from the Rose Marie Baumgarten Art Endowment Fund, 2022.3.a-b
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New to the Collections: Summer 2022
Breton Painting Gifted to Joslyn
Joslyn Art Museum is delighted to announce a new addition to its European collection—Jules Breton’s The Departure for the Fields (1857), a gift from the Landen family in memory of Mary and Mickey Landen. Read more.
Pictured left: Jules Breton (French, 1827–1906), The Departure for the Fields, 1857, oil on canvas, 25 x 27 in., Given in Memory of Mary and Mickey Landen, 2021.11
Hišmašma Added to Collection
Hišmašma is a collaboration between three generations of Sisituwa?/Wahpetuwa? (Dakota) and Hohe (Assiniboine) women known as the Growing Thunder Collective. Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty (born 1950), her daughter Juanita (born 1969), and granddaughter Jessa Rae (born 1990) have brought national attention to Northern Plains beadwork and to the much older practice of porcupine quill embroidery. Read more.
Pictured left: Growing Thunder Collective, Hišmašma, 2021, buffalo and deerskin hide, sinew, trade cloth, glass micro beads, porcupine claws, porcupine quills, human hair, and natural pigments, 26 1/2 x 12 x 8 1/2 in., Museum purchase with funds from the Durham Center for Western Studies Art Endowment Fund, 2022.1
Photographs of Contemporary American West Gifted to Joslyn
Joslyn Art Museum is excited to announce a gift of sixty-six photographs from Greg MacGregor's (American, born 1941) eight-year-long project retracing Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s trip from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Northwest (1804–6). Read more.
Pictured left: Greg MacGregor (American, born 1941), Ryan Dam and Falls during low water runoff, Great Falls, Montana, 1995, silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm), Gift of the artist, 2022.2.33
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Public Portal to Bodmer Collection in Development
(posted: July 2022) A team led by Creighton University faculty has received a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a digital portal to increase public access, exposure, and interpretation of Joslyn’s Maximilian–Bodmer collection. The portal, The Natural Face of North America, is a collaboration with Joslyn Art Museum and the Nebraska Indian Community College. Read more.
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Monumental Collection Gift by Ed Ruscha
 In 2018, Omaha-born artist Ed Ruscha (American, born 1937) made a significant gift of art to Joslyn Art Museum following the exhibition Word/Play: Prints, Photographs, and Paintings by Ed Ruscha (February 3–May 6, 2018). Ruscha’s gift is a compact retrospective of his practice, surveying the artist’s wry and playful use of text and image. Anchoring the installation are drawings from the early 1960s through the 1990s that employ both traditional materials, such as acrylic and graphite, and more unconventional media, including gun powder. Ruscha’s printmaking prowess is also highlighted in several recent etchings, as well as the seven-color screen print, Standard Station, 1966, one of the artist’s most iconic images.
Complementing the installation are an additional twenty works from Ruscha’s personal collection made by his colleagues in Los Angeles, where he has lived since the mid-1950s. While Ruscha is recognized as one of the most influential California artists of his time, this gift acknowledges the friendships and collaborators that helped him establish his career. Seen in tandem, Ruscha’s two gifts allow Joslyn to tell a westward-looking narrative of modern and contemporary art through the lens of an artist born in the city of Omaha
What's Pictured: Ed Ruscha (American, born 1937), Artists, 1998, acrylic on paper, 30 1/4 x 39 7/16 in., Promised gift of Ed and Danna Ruscha
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European Collection Catalogue
European Paintings and Sculpture from Joslyn Art Museum is the first publication to reexamine the Museum’s permanent collection in over three decades, marking a significant milestone for the institution and drawing well-deserved attention to the artworks in its care.
This new, richly illustrated volume presents 100 artworks from the collection, dating from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth century and representing many of the most important artists, schools, and styles of European art history. Noted scholars and specialists in the field examine these works while considering artist biography, practice and technique, and cultural and historical contexts. An introductory essay written by Taylor J. Acosta, Ph.D., Joslyn's Associate Curator of European Art, offers an engaging history of the arts in Omaha and the formation of the Museum’s European collection.
This publication has been made possible with the generous support of The Hawks Foundation, Gilbert M. and Martha H. Hitchcock Foundation, Joslyn Art Museum Association, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
Now available in the Hitchcock Museum Shop!
$45 hardcover (Joslyn Member Price: $40.50); $35 softcover (Joslyn Member Price: $31.50)
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The Maximilian Journals
 Between 1832-34, the explorer and naturalist Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, Germany, embarked on a voyage into the furthest reaches of the American Interior. Accompanied by the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, Maximilian set forth from St. Louis in April 1833 on a 2,500 mile journey by steamship and keelboat up the Missouri River, traveling as far as Fort McKenzie, Montana. Wintering at the Mandan village near Fort Clark, they returned downriver the following spring, having spent over a year amongst the tribes of the Upper Missouri. The watercolors that Bodmer produced on this journey remain one of the most perceptive and compelling visual accounts of the West ever created. Meanwhile, his patron Maximilian was equally hard at work on a journal documenting his scientific and anthropologic observations. Few historical chronicles are as informative and eloquent, describing the topography, Native peoples, natural history, and the burgeoning fur trade of the High Plains. Today, Maximilian’s journals are a centerpiece of the Joslyn collection, accompanied by his collection of over 350 watercolors and drawings by Karl Bodmer.
In September 2012, Joslyn Art Museum published the third and final volume of the English translation of The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied, one of the most important documents of the nineteenth-century American West. Volumes 1 and 2 were published in 2008 and 2010 respectively. In 2008, Volume 1 was named the "Outstanding Nonfiction Book" of the year by National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. In the fall of 2011, Volume 1 received the Western History Association’s Dwight L. Smith Award, a biennial award recognizing outstanding bibliographic or research work. Earlier in 2011, Volumes 1 and 2 were reviewed by Stuart Ferguson of The Wall Street Journal, who called the works a "magnificent chronicle."
The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied — Volume 1: May 1832–April 1833; Volume 2: April–September 1833; and Volume 3: September 1833–August 1834 are available in Joslyn Art Museum’s Hitchcock Museum Shop for $85 per volume. The Journals are edited by Stephen S. Witte and Marsha V. Gallagher. Volumes 1 and 2 are translated by William J. Orr, Paul Schach, and Dieter Karch with forewords by John Wilson. Volume 3 is translated by Dieter Karch with a foreword by Joslyn’s Executive Director and CEO Jack Becker.
Support for the Maximilian Journals Project has come from many sources. Robert Daugherty funded the completion of the translation in 2003. The Bodmer Society, Charles W. Durham, and Marlene and J. Joe Ricketts made timely contributions to support initial editing and production costs. Dorothy and Stanley M. Truhlsen, Arader Galleries, Ann and Steve Berzin, Judy and Terry Haney, Susan and Michael Lebens, Pinnacle Bank, and Phyllis and Del Toebben provided additional support. Joslyn was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Oklahoma Press received funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Ultimately, however, it has been the extremely generous gifts of Howard L. and Rhonda A. Hawks and The Hawks Foundation that have made this important publication possible.
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