Art to Feed the Heart
Three museums offer a wide range of arts and exhibitions

Though Kentucky may be best known for its speedy horses and fine bourbon, fine arts flourish as well at three impressive spots in the state – the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, the University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington and the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art. Though all offer plenty of diversity for the well-trained eye, you don’t have to be an aficionado to ogle the art at these havens of culture, for in addition to their educational mission, art museums also can provide a quiet respite in this noisy, busy world.

UK Art Museum
“Like any art museum, ours is a nice place to visit,” said Dr. Donald Sands, a former acting dean of the University of Kentucky’s college of arts and sciences, retired chemistry professor and current interim director of its art museum. “You come in and are surrounded by beauty and by peacefulness. You get away from the hectic life outside. I think an art museum tells you a lot about a community. If a community has a good art museum, it’s generally a pretty good place to live because people care about art.”

Now serving an audience of more than 400,000 in 50 Kentucky counties, the University of Kentucky Art Museum (UKAM) combines several intimate galleries with expansive wall space that was embellished with a gorgeous splash of vivid-colored quilts during my September visit.

Highlights of its eclectic, 3,500-plus object permanent collection include European and American paintings and sculpture from Italian Baroque to contemporary; prints and drawings, featuring masterworks by Rembrandt and Durer; a growing survey of regional artists; a fine array of multi cultural decorative arts; and a notable photography collection and annual endowed lecture series with renowned photographers and historians.

Two forthcoming exhibitions shine with promise. Through Jan. 27, 2002, “A Spring-fed Pond: My Friendships with Five Kentucky Writers” features Kentucky Poet Laureate James Baker Hall’s photographs of Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman and Mary Ann Taylor Hall.

And “Sunlight and Shadow: American Impressionism, 1885-1945” will bring a bit of warmth to winter from Jan. 20 through March 10.

With the help of some 60 docents, the museum’s busy education department, offers slide talks in schools, senior citizens’ centers and convalescent centers, tours for groups of all ages, family programs, a summer art camp, junior docent program, gallery talks and a newsletter for teachers.

“What education does is to create an environment in which the visitor can have that great ‘ah-ha,’ that point of understanding and connecting,” said Deborah Borrowdale-Cox, curator of education for the museum. “You don’t have to like everything in the museum, but it’s really nice if there can be one way, one time that a work of art can reach you, can touch you, can inspire you or frighten you or delight you, or somehow make that happen.”

Louisville’s Speed Art Museum
Begun in 1927, the Speed Art Museum is Kentucky’s oldest and largest, ranking among the top 25 by endowment in the United States. Snuggling up to the University of Louisville’s Belknap Campus, it’s truly big city, with 8,000 works of art that run a mind-boggling gamut through European painting and sculpture, 20th century painting and sculpture, Classical Antiquities, African Art, a Kentucky Collection, Native American Gallery, Tapestry Gallery, and an English Renaissance Room.

Its Greek Revival columned facade, designed after the Cleveland Museum of Art, welcomes visitors with treasures that include works by Impressionists Chagall, Picasso, Monet, Klee, Matisse, Dubuffet, Utrillo and its most recent important acquisition, Cezanne’s “Two Apples on a Table.” A sculpture gallery awaits just inside the front entrance, large skylights bathe galleries throughout in natural light, a cafe offers tasty lunches, a new audio tour provides insights into the permanent collection, and a new system of descriptive labels make perusing easier.

“One of the most important things we do are educational programs,” said Lonna Versluys, the Speed’s administrative assistant for public information, “so it’s very important for us to have expanded labels on the artwork. They give an idea of what else besides painting was going on during that period of time. People want to know and the labels answer many of their questions.

“Every exhibit has programs related to it,” she continued. “In addition to bringing in a lot of school children from around the state, we have adult and family programming as well.”

Part of a $12 million renovation completed in 1997, a 4,600-square-foot learning center – the only one on the region – sports workshop spaces for Saturday drop-ins, computer learning stations, preschool learning facilities, and Art Sparks, a 3,000-square-foot interactive gallery with fun multi-sensory activities that you don’t have to be a child to enjoy.

Learn textile combining on a “Weaving Wall,” make a Native American story shirt while sitting in a copper wire tepee, have your photo snapped, then drawn – usually hilariously – in one of six art styles, or watch your shadow cavort in psychedelic colors inside a video artwork. I had such a good time trying all the above, I hated to leave.

Upcoming exhibits reflect the museum’s quality. “A Brush With History: Paintings from the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery” runs through Jan. 27; “A Bountiful Plenty form the Shelburne Museum: Folk Art Traditions in America” is featured Feb. 19 - April 14; and “Masterworks from the Albertina” in Vienna, Austria, runs March 19 - May 12. And to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2002, the Speed is hosting a blockbuster show, “Millet to Matisse: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French Painting” from Nov. 6, 2002 - Feb. 2,2003.

Owensboro Museum of Fine Art
Though by no means as large as its Louisville counterpart, the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art (OMFA), which turns 25 years old in 2002, is a surprising jewel in a West Kentucky town known as the “Bar-B-Q Capital of the World.”

The museum’s interesting, differing building styles – the 1910 library is Neo-classic, the 1859 Smith House is Georgian with Italianate influence, and the two are joined by a sunny, Post Modern atrium that houses a sculpture court — combine into an architectural “village concept,” in which buildings of unlike design are combined to create one structure.

Within that structure, a growing permanent collection features 18th, 19th and early 20th century American and European fine and decorative arts. At its helm is a bronze by French Impressionist Edgar Degas. “It’s unusual to find a piece of that magnitude in a small museum in Western Kentucky,” Hood said. “It’s the cornerstone of our collection.”

Another major work is a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence of King George IV of England, important because it provided the missing provenance of the Hope diamond between the time it was stolen from the French Court during the French Revolution to its resurfacing in the possession of the Hope family in the Netherlands. In return for OMFA’s part in that research, the Smithsonian sent a replica of the diamond, now on display right beneath that portrait.

Another intriguing display is the Stained Glass Gallery, 16 turn-of-the-century stained glass windows in breathtaking 25-foot light towers crafted by the international-recognized German/American glass maker Emil Frei and restored by his great-grandsons.

If the museum has a specialty, however, it’s Kentucky culture. Through Dec. 30, OMFA has collaborated with the Kentucky Museum at Western Kentucky University to exhibit “Kentucky’s Women Artists: 1850 to 2000: Part 1. Part 2 runs from Jan. 20 - March 13.

“We manage to document our racehorses, athletes and bourbon, everything but our artists,” Hood said, “so we decided that was a small niche we could fill as a small museum. We took as a mission to produce an annual documentary on some aspect of Kentucky’s cultural history.

“We’ve exhibited the work of virtually every major Kentucky artist of the last 200 years. I think we’ve not left a stone unturned.”

In September, I was treated to an example of that mission at “Appalachian Spirit.” The bulk of the museum’s huge Southeastern American folk art collection was on display, with bright-colored, hand-stitched quilts; intricately hand-carved figures, and a joyous show of native art peppered with mountain humor.

Currently, a Young at Art Gallery houses kids’ art that through workshops relates to an exhibit on display in the museum. With its art rotating every four to six weeks, just as temporary exhibits do in the Carnegie building, Young at Art is a prototype for a planned children’s learning center within the next five to six years.

Rounding out the museum’s offerings is a series of interpretive events for adults and children that include gallery talks, lectures, fine-art films and videos, and demonstrations by visual and performing artists. For the Appalachian exhibit, for instance, Eastern Kentucky musicians provided down-home background.

According to Museum Director Mary Bryan Hood, OMFA’s appeal is its variety. “There is virtually something for everyone to see, no matter what their taste, age or educational level may be,” she said, “because of the versatility of our exhibitions and programming.”

After your OMFA visit, assuage that arty appetite big time at the Moonlite Bar-B-Q’s famous buffet of barbecued pork, mutton, ribs, ham, chicken, beef et al. If you leave hungry, it’s your own fault.

All three museums welcome groups that call ahead and each has an intriguing gift shop. For hours and exhibit dates, visit the Speed at www.speedmuseum.org and the UK Art Museum at www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum. You can phone OMFA at (270) 685-3181.

Katherine Tandy Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report.
editorial@lanereport.com

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