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Color and Line: Expressive Traditions in Boston

January 20, 2017

Natalie Alper Acrylic and Pencil on CanvasWhat happens when a museum is planning a move? How and where can you store 3,500 works of art while construction takes place, or can it be traveled? Endicott College and the Danforth Art Museum present a unique exhibition that includes 29 works from the Permanent Collection of the Danforth Art Museum\School in an exhibition titled: Color and Line: Expressive Traditions in Boston.

Curated by the Danforth curatorial staff, this exhibition illustrates Boston’s unique approach to Expressionism by uniting works from the late 1930s to the present day through an examination of subject, process, and materials. Influenced by the teachings of German Expressionist Karl Zerbe, and the early work of Hyman Bloom and Jack Levine, artists coming of age in Boston in the 1940s and 1950s vividly used figuration, color, and line to translate emotion and a sense of the inner self to their works. Boston’s figurative style emerged in the 1940s as an expansion of the modernist canon, and this exhibition explores figurative abstraction as an alternative modernism. Its vivid color, bold lines, and tactile surfaces carried throughout the twentieth century and have been reimagined by contemporary artists in Boston. This exhibition of 29 works from the permanent Collection at Danforth Art illustrates a range of experimentation across media including painting, drawing, sculpture, encaustic, mixed media, collage, photography and installation. An exhibition of this importance will provide an opportunity for students, faculty, and the public to discover, learn, and enjoy.  

A curator talk by Jessica Roscio, Curator, Danforth Art Museum is set for 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 15 in the Spencer Presentation Gallery. This will be followed up by a reception from 5 – 7 p.m. in the Carol Grillo Gallery. All events and programming are free and open to the public. Funded in part by the van Otterloo Family Foundation.

Gallery Hours: 

January 30 – February 10
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., closed on Saturday and Sunday

February 11 – March 16
Monday – Thursday, 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Gallery will be closed on February 20

March 11 – March 19 
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., closed Saturday and Sunday