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The Illinois State Museum Lockport Gallery offers more than just a quiet retreat to contemplate critically noted exhibitions highlighting the art and visual culture of Illinois. Special events, talks, guided tours, and informative presentations provide background information and insight, bringing the each installation alive.
Collections Cameo: Recent Acquisitions to the Illinois State Museum Collection
Exhibitions open July 4, 2024. This exhibition spotlights a selection of recent acquisitions to the Art Collection of the Illinois State Museum. There is a wide range of subject matter, styles, and materials. What is common through all the work is that they are distinctive voices and singular expressions of their makers.
Glen Davies: Moment of Mystery is from a recent gift that provides a concise overview of the artist’s career. Evelyn Statsinger & Barbara Rossi: Picture Consequence, features work by two artists who experimented with making pictures outside the constraints of realism. Jaroslava Lialia Kuchma: Tapestries presents two recent gifts of the artist exploring Ukrainian identity. Additional works throughout the gallery highlight important acquisitions to our museum’s art collection and dynamic story of the history of art of our state.
Joel Bujnowski, Glen C. Davies, Stephanie Graham, Vera Klement, Sarah Krepp, Jaroslava Lialia Kuchma, Richard Loving, Ben Mahmoud, Ed Paschke, Frank Piatek, Barbara Rossi, Paul Sierra, Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, Evelyn Statsinger, Octavia Thorns, Eric Von Haynes
Glen C. Davies: Moments of Mystery
Glen C. Davies: Moments of Mystery will open on July 4, 2024. Davies explores human desire and frailty through the lens of the circus sideshow. This exhibition of eleven paintings, drawings and sculpture covers a 50-year span in his career. The pieces were gifted to the Illinois State Museum by the artist and the Kohler Foundation, Inc in 2023.
Glen Davies was born in Chicago and attended the School of the Art Institute in the late 1960s. After fulfilling a childhood dream of traveling with the circus, Davies worked for a short time as a billboard artist and sign painter, eventually opening a mural painting business. After receiving an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois, Davies has divided his time between his studio pursuits and a variety of alternative employments, including circus/carnival show painter, sideshow banner artist, professional muralist, curator, and educator. He currently lives in Urbana, IL.
Glen C. Davies: Moments of Mystery is on view at the ISM-Lockport Gallery through October 14, 2024. Read more about this exhibit on our museum blog.
Picture Consequence: Barbara Rossi and Evelyn Statsinger
Barbara Rossi (1940-2023) and Evelyn Statsinger (1927-2016) tested the possibilities of depicting the human form through experiments in geometry, pattern, and inventive processes.
Statsinger and Rossi were contemporaries, separated by thirteen years of age. Both are associated with a loose grouping of artists known as the Chicago Imagists. From the 1950s through the 1980s, these artists used the figure to narrate the human condition with startling, strange images. This 30-plus year period was an exciting, inventive time when friendships and dialogue between artists left an indelible impression on each other and on our state’s art history.
The works featured on our second floor gallery come from two recent gifts: The Evelyn Statsinger Cohen Trust in 2019 and Rossi’s from The Kohler Foundation in 2022. Read more about Picture Consequence on our museum blog.
Jaroslava Lialia Kuchma: Tapestries
Jaroslava Lialia Kuchma: Tapestries. Kuchma’s two large tapestries are connected to her Ukrainian Identity, as well as larger global histories of sovereignty and migration. ZJB celebrates her late husband Zenon Babij and his journey as a child from Europe to Chicago in 1950. The bold, electric lines and colors reflect his outgoing, mutli-lingual personality. Zhuravel, a Ukrainian nickname for the crane, is a symbol of hope and longing for home. Both are recent gifts from the artist.
Jaroslava Lialia Kuchma was born in Ukraine in 1943 and immigrated with her family to the Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago in the 1950s. Kuchma is a weaver, photographer, and calligrapher who is active with the Ukrainian National Museum and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago.
Jaroslava Lialia Kuchma: Tapestries is on view in our 2nd floor art gallery through the spring of 2024. Read more about Kuchma's work on our blog
