Partners: Brandywine Workshop and International Art and Artists

This exhibition features 63 multi-media works including paintings, works on paper, photographs and video by culturally diverse artists from across the United States. The curatorial team included lead curator Blake Bradford, director of education at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Robert Lee, executive director of the Asian American Arts Center, New York; and Benito Huerta, associate professor & director of the Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington. The central theme is the use of portraiture and figuration as symbols for emotional and social ideas. Artwork in the exhibition uses portraiture to depict circumstances and experiences of multicultural populations in present-day America. The artwork is personal, reflective, autobiographical and of a high technical quality, creating an exhibition that is both visually beautiful as well as socially relevant. The exhibition includes the work of first generation Americans and emerging new immigrant artists that examines issues and themes of race, gender, religion, history, politics and family. Included are such internationally renowned artist as Luis Jimenez, Tomie Arai, Elizabeth Catlett and Faith Ringgold.

Native Views was a contemporary Native American art exhibition comprised of 70 artworks by 53 Native American artists. Native Views explored the influence of popular culture and the many commonalties shared by all Americans. Visitors discovered the richness, complexity and breadth of contemporary Native American art while examining varying perspectives on society. Guest curator, Joanna Bigfeather (Western Cherokee and Mescalero Apache) redefined Native art by broadening the limits and confronting the stereotypes that currently define it. Comprised entirely of contemporary artwork by Native American artists, Native Views had three sub-themes: Universal and Related Influences: Popular Culture; Native Knowledge: Science, Land, and Wisdom; and Modernity of Cultures: Technology. Artists included Pat Courtney Gold, Roxanne Swentzell, Curtis Benally, Jean LaMar, , Allan Michelson, Shelly Niro, Diego Romero, Kay Walkingstick, James Lavadour, Melody Printup Hope , Anthony Deiter, Norman Akers, and Gerald Clark.

Lenders

Heard Museum Institute of American Indian Arts Museum

Pueblo of Pojoaque Poeh Museum Wright Publishing Company

Partner – National Air and Space Administration (NASA)

Curated by guest curator Susan Lawson-Bell, Artistry of Space was an exhibition of artworks from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Air and Space Museum art collections that reflected the excitement and energy of space exploration. The exhibition included artworks of varying styles ranging from realistic to abstract, created in media as diverse as oil, acrylic, pen and ink, watercolor and pencil. It featured the artwork of over 50 American artists, including Peter Max, Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol and James Browning Wyeth. Artistry of Space traveled onboard Artrain USA through 2002.

Lenders

National Air & Space Administration (NASA)

National Air & Space Museum (NASM)

Partners – The Smithsonian Associates and the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service

Since 1972, the Smithsonian’s Resident Associate Program has commissioned world renowned artists to create artwork celebrating and commemorating momentous events at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. For the first time, The Smithsonian Associates collection was assembled to tour nationally onboard Artrain. This exhibition included approximately 37 works by artists such as Mindy Weisel, Larry Rivers, Alexander Calder, Georgia O’Keefe and Gene Davis. The collection represented a range of artistic styles, including realism, surrealism, abstraction and expressionism in a range of media, including collage, lithography, silk-screen and mixed media. Art in Celebration also introduced visitors to the fundamentals of art, subject matter, color, line and shape. Art in Celebration was an opportunity to celebrate art!

This exhibition was guest curated by Nan Plummer, from the University of Michigan Museum of Art; assistant curator to Plummer was Pamela Warner. The curator intended the exhibition to reflect the range of North American artists’ responses to the universal themes of transportation and travel. This exhibition featured paintings, prints and sculpture that explored artists’ fascination with and response to technology, design and social change associated with travel and transportation. Approximately 87 artworks were included and highlighted artists included: Claes Oldenburg, Thomas Hart Benton, Richard Estes and Nathaniel Currier & James Merritt Ives.

Lenders

Allan Stone Gallery, New York Columbus Museum of Art Cranbrook Academy of Art Dearborn Historical Museum Dennos Museum Center NMC Detroit Institute of the Arts Detroit Institute of the Arts Founders Society Flint Institute of Arts General Motors Design Center

Grand Rapids Art Museum Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Muskegon Museum of Art Sheldon Ross Gallery, Michigan Thomas Hart Benton Trust United Missouri Bank University of Kentucky Art Museum University of Michigan Museum of Art University of Michigan Special Collections Library

Partner: The Detroit Antique Toy Museum

Approximately 292 toys from the Lawrence Scripps Wilkinson Collection of Toys traveled onboard Artrain. Collected over more than a thirty-year period, the Lawrence Scripps Wilkinson Collection of Toys illustrates various aspects of the historical progress of civilization, with an emphasis on post-Industrial Revolution development in the United States. The Collection’s toys provide a three-dimensional viewing window on American life, from horse-and-buggy days to moon landings and space travel. Treasures of Childhood was carefully assembled to show the exciting development of this great country during its formative years, as revealed through its manufactured playthings.

Partner - Cranbrook Academy of Art

In celebration of Michigan’s sesquicentennial, Artrain featured artworks from Michigan’s own Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Cranbrook Museum. Cranbrook Academy was a dream for George Booth, who bought a large, overrun farm in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in early 1904. Booth wanted Cranbrook to be a place where artists lived and worked, thus promoting a creative atmosphere for the personal growth of each artist and student. Containing approximately 50 works, the exhibition highlighted past and present artists in the Cranbrook community, including Marshall Fredericks, Pipsan Saarinen Swanson, Tony Rosenthal, Charles Eames, Gerhardt Knodel and Steve Murakishi.

Signs of the Times showcased approximately 50 artworks, by such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, Audrey Flack and Richard Estes. Through their artworks, Signs of the Times helped to describe the artistic styles of Pop Art, photo-realism and Dadaism. Pop art was an artistic style in which artists were influenced by objects in the world around them - billboards, movies, mass produced food products and automobiles. Photo-realism is characterized by the meticulous reproduction of photographic images on canvas. Dadaism came about after the First World War, in which artists showed their disillusionment with the world after the devastation of the war. They purposefully chose non-art objects and techniques to convey their perception of the meaninglessness of moral values after the war’s great destruction. For this exhibition, the exteriors of Artrain’s railcars were painted by thirteen artists from New York City. These train painters, or graffiti artists, whose beginning traced back to painting murals on unattended train cars, were invited to paint twelve murals on the cars over the course of four days. Many of their murals used familiar images from Pop Art

John J. Hohmann, executive director of Artrain at the time, was given credit for the idea of bringing music together with art onboard Artrain. The theme of music was appropriate in 1985, which was the 300th anniversary of the birth date of three famous musicians, Bach, Handel and Scarlatti. Guest curated by Mary R. Riordan and Cynthia S. Greig, a curator of Baroque musical instruments, The Music of Art contained approximately 18 meticulous recreations of baroque instruments by contemporary artists. These pieces set the stage for the era in which Bach, Handel and Scarlatti flourished. Juxtaposed with the instruments were approximately 61 woodblock prints, engravings, paintings and three-dimensional work depicting images from 450 BCE to the present, in which man was making art and music.

Lenders

Art Institute of Chicago Cranbrook Academy of Art David & Alfred Smart Gallery Detroit Institute of Arts Kasle Gallery Kresge Art Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Muskegon Museum of Art Standard Oil Company, Chicago University of Michigan Museum of Art Western Michigan University Art Department Zolla Lieberman Gallery

Guest curated by Pat O’Connor, The Creative Impulse featured approximately 17 artworks. This exhibition showed how the primary sources of inspiration – the spiritual realm, the physical world and the perceptions and personality of human nature – represent a common thread that binds the rich tapestry of art and its history together. The Creative Impulse featured work by Grant Wood, Paul Manship, Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist and stressed that understanding and appreciating the intrinsic values of art lies in understanding its universal and timeless elements.

Lenders

Charles H. MacNider Museum Flint Institute of Arts Indianapolis Museum of Art Madison Art Center

Minneapolis Institute of Arts University of Michigan Museum of Art University Art Museum

Texas was the 25th state Artrain toured, but the first state to have a thematic exhibition of its own art assembled. This contemporary exhibition was sent on a 10-city tour of Texas. Guest curated by Becky Duval Reese, Texas on My Mind showcased 36 artists whose work encompassed ideas about the land, history and people of Texas. This exhibition featured approximately 38 artworks by such artists as Luis Jimenez, Al Souza and Ed Blackburn.

Lenders

AIR Gallery, Austin Delahunty Gallery, Dallas DW Gallery, Dallas Meredith Long Art Gallery, Houston Moody Gallery, Houston

Patrick Gallery, Austin Peregrine Press, Dallas SOHO Gallery, Austin Texas Gallery, Houston

This exhibition included both traditional and contemporary art forms, which were truly American. The first section examined the integration of art within the Pacific Coast and Artic Native American societies. It highlighted artists who delved into their traditional Native American roots and assimilated the fundamental spirit of those traditions. Some of the Native American artists chose to employ traditional art making methods, while others used elements of their heritage with contemporary innovations. The second part of this exhibition featured the birth of Abstract Expressionism, the beginning of the “new” American definition of Modern Art. Artists included Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell.

Lenders

Alaska Contemporary Art Bank Alaska State Museum Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum Cranbrook Academy of Art Detroit Institute of the Arts Field Museum of Natural History John Berggruen Gallery Kresge Art Gallery Lowie Museum of Anthropology

Oakland Museum Open Pacific Graphics Limited Oregon Historical Society Portland Art Museum Quail Plume Studio, Albuquerque Santa Barbara Museum of Art Seattle Art Museum University of Alaska Museum University of California Berkley Art Museum University of Oregon Museum of Art Collection

This exhibition examined the folk arts of selected immigrant groups that settled in the American heartland. These groups, in pursuit of opportunity in a new land, retained their particular folk identities in a challenging new cultural environment. Artworks chosen for this exhibition expressed the interpersonal and emotional aspects of artistic development. The works spoke specifically of the regions where the artists lived, experienced the daily history of their people and the changing beauty of the land. Traditions contained approximately 93 artworks by artists such as George Inness, Odilon Redon, Willem de Kooning, Kathe Kollwitz and Amedeo Modigliani. Guest curated by Thomas M. Elliot, Traditions traveled from April to November 1981 through Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

Lenders

AIR Gallery, Austin Center for Southern Folklore Cleveland Museum of Natural History Cranbrook Science Institute Detroit Institute of the Arts Feigenson- Rosenstein Gallery Flint Institute of Arts Fort Wayne Museum of Art Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Indianapolis Museum of Art Kresge Art Gallery

Luther College Collection of the Norwegian-American Museum Meredith Long Gallery, Houston Midwest Museum of American Art Moody Gallery, Houston Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute Museum of Michigan State University Muskegon Museum of Art Pennsylvania State University Museum of Art Texas Gallery, Houston Toledo Museum of Art University of Michigan Museum of Art

The Changing Canvas made a statewide tour of Michigan onboard Artrain from April to July 1980, before being exhibited at the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum during September and October 1980. Guest curated by Julie Hall, the intention of this exhibition was to chart the evolution of American painting from the post World War II period up to the present. The Changing Canvas featured approximately 56 artworks by such well-known artists as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder and Helen Frankenthaler.

Lenders

Cranbrook Academy of Art Detroit Institute of the Arts Flint Institute of Arts

Grand Rapids Art Museum Kresge Art Gallery University of Michigan Museum of Art

FULLSPECTRUM embraced the entire range of the painter’s art, from the free and unselfconscious realizations of the self-taught folk artist to the art-aware creations of the trained painter. It was the intention of the exhibition to encourage fresh comparisons between folk art and fine art, and between the ideas generated by the two groups of artists working from two very different traditions, co-existing in a single culture. FULLSPECTRUM was comprised of “Michigan Moderns” and “Contemporary American Folk Painters.” Traveling with FULLSPECTRUM was an exhibition displaying the wood-carving sculpture of Fred Alten. Alten worked in obscurity and was not “discovered” until 30 years after his death, when 156 wood-carved sculptures were found in his garage. It was Artrain’s good fortune that the work was discovered and made available for exhibition.

Lenders

Detroit Institute of the Arts Donald Morris Gallery Feigenson-Rosenstein Gallery

Jay Johnson's American's Folk Heritage Gallery Susanne Hilberry Gallery

A Celebration of the Creative American Spirit was divided into many sections and featured work from the earliest “folk” artists to the most contemporary. Michigan at the Turn of the Century consisted of large transparencies of photographs representing changes in technology and life-style. The Folk Art Gallery featured “everyday” objects crafted with the greatest care and, in many instances, through by-gone processes. The Eye of the Camera placed four screens flanked by mirrors in front of the visitor for a retrospective of American culture as seen by our most distinguished photographers. Contemporary music accompanies this journey from the Industrial Age to the present. The American Land featured a selection of paintings, photographs and sculpture depicting the movement from realistic to pop-art images. Included was a gallery comprised of paintings from primitive to contemporary expressions. Made in the USA contrasted useful objects of the past with their contemporary counterparts. Objects included light fixtures and lunch boxes.

Lenders

Adler & Schnee Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Museum, Flint Alice Simsar Gallery, Inc., Ann Arbor Archives of American Art Arwin Galleries, Inc., Detroit Clements Library, University of Michigan Dartmouth College Detroit Historical Museum Detroit Institute of the Arts Flint Institute of the Arts Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit Grand Rapids Art Museum Hackley Art Museum, Muskegon Henry Ford Museum

Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Mel Rycus Limited Editions, Inc., Orchard Lake Michigan Council for the Arts Michigan Historical Collections, University of Michigan Michigan State University Museum Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of the Great Lakes Norelco Representative Pewabic Pottery Polaroid Corporation Saginaw Art Museum Tadross & Zahloute, Inc., Detroit

This exhibition featured the creative partnership that exists between the creative person and their cultural environment. It opened with a panorama of work that unveiled the creative attempts of individuals in past cultures to enrich their world through art. Also exhibited were “innovators,” such as Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh and Matisse, to name a few, who struggled to have their work accepted on standards that they were establishing. Man Creates featured approximately 49 artworks by such artists as Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, William Baziotes, George Segal and Franz Kline.

Lenders

Abbot Laboratories, Wisconsin Alabama State Council on Art and Humanities American Republic Insurance Company, Des Moines Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York Arwin Gallery, Detroit Art Sources, Inc., Jacksonville AT & SF Railway Babcock Galleries, New York Birmingham Gallery Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis Cedar Rapids Art Center Charles H. MacNider Museum, Iowa Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Cranbrook Academy of Art Davenport Municipal Art Gallery Denver Art Museum Des Moines Art Center Detroit Institute of the Arts Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit Elvehjam Art Center, Wisconsin Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Flint Institute of Arts Forsythe Galleries, Ann Arbor Franklin Siden Gallery, West Bloomfield Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit Hamline University Heard Museum High Museum of Art Hunter Museum of Art, Tennessee J. L. Hudson Gallery, Detroit Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Kennedy Gallery, New York

Kresge Art Center Gallery, Michigan State University Lantern Gallery, Ann Arbor Lemoyne Art Foundation, Inc. Louis K. Miesel Gallery, New York Madison Art Center, Wisconsin Meridian Art Museum, Mississippi Metropolitan Museum of Art Milwaukee Art Center Minneapolis Institute of Art Mississippi Art Association Mississippi Arts Commission Museum of Art, University of Arizona North Carolina Museum of Art Norton Gallery & School of Art, Florida Phoenix Art Museum Ringling Museum of Art, Florida Roswell Museum of Art, New Mexico Sioux Falls Civic Fine Arts Association South Carolina Arts Commission Springville Museum of Art, Utah Tennessee Botanical Gardens & Fine Arts Center Tennessee State Museum Tweed Museum of Art, Minnesota University of Iowa Museum of Art University of Michigan Museum of Art University of Minnesota University of New Mexico Art Museum University of Wisconsin Library University of Wisconsin Murphy Library University of Wisconsin Rare Books Department, Memorial Library Utah Museum of Fine Arts Walker Art Center, Minnesota