Several permanent collection galleries to open this summer
OKLAHOMA CITY (Tuesday, May 16) – The Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKCMOA) will showcase the work of abstract artist Paul Reed this summer in one of the Museum’s second-floor galleries. Paul Reed: Works on Paper will open alongside True Nature: Rodin and the Age of Impressionism on Saturday, June 17.
“The museum’s re-installed permanent collection galleries and Paul Reed: Works on Paper circle the globe and travel across time to highlight the vital contributions of artists in a wide variety of media and cultural context,” said OKCMOA President and CEO Michael J. Anderson, PhD. “Beside many old favorites, we are featuring a number of artists—many of whom are women—and artworks, including Reed’s exceptional contributions to printmaking, which are being presented in our galleries for the first time.”
Paul Reed was an original member of the Washington Color School Painters, a group of abstract artists who experimented with unique paint application techniques. Reed began working in a smaller home studio in the early 1970s, which led to the creation of these and other intimately scaled works. In 2017 and 2018, OKCMOA was gifted 125 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by the Paul and Esther Reed Trust, establishing the Museum as the definitive home of Reed’s work. Paul Reed: Works on Paper will be on view through January 28, 2024.
Four galleries of works from OKCMOA’s permanent collection will also open on June 17. The second-floor galleries will consist of Picturing America, The Art of Still Life, and Inspired Observations: Scenes from Around the World. The Picturing America gallery will consist of two sections: Nature and Nostalgia, depicting the romanticized wilderness of the American West, and Labor and Industry, from the Museum’s New Deal Federal Art Project (FAP) collection. The Art of Still Life will feature a highlight from the Rose Family Glass Collection, along with longstanding still-life favorites like those of Georgia O’Keeffe and Gabriele Münter, and Inspired Observations will take visitors on a trip around the world, through the eyes of adventurous artists who worked in a number of media including oil painting and photography.
On the third floor, visitors will be able to see the connection between the current installation Experiments in Abstraction and The Washington Gallery of Modern Art Collection, which features Paul Reed and a number of his peers. A painting by Willem De Looper, a recently acquired gift from the De Looper Foundation, will also be on view in The Washington Gallery of Modern Art Collection. De Looper came to the United States from the Netherlands in 1950 at the age of 17. In 1959 he began working as a guard at The Philips Gallery in D.C.; he ended his career there as Chief Curator in the late 1980s.
In celebration of the countdown to True Nature’s opening, the Museum will offer general admission tickets for $10 plus tax from May 17 through June 16. Programming that occurs during the duration of the exhibition will be announced at the beginning of June. To be among the first to know, sign up for the Museum’s weekly newsletter at okcmoa.com/newsletter.
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Image Credit: Paul Reed, 7 24 89 2, 1989. Gouache on paper. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Gift of the Paul and Esther Reed Trust, 2018.073a-b, © Paul and Esther Reed Trust
