Russell Prather: Layers and Light features the work of artist Russell Prather in this solo installation-style exhibition of his most recent works at the Muskegon Museum of Art. Prather, a Michigan artist and Professor at Northern Michigan University, creates his multi-layered artworks from mylar, paint, and various hardware, establishing hybrid sculptures that shift in form with the viewer’s perspective. Multiple flat layers of opaque and translucent surfaces combine to create illusions of three dimensional forms. Combined in many instances with light, Prather’s work is intended to confound our habitual way of understanding what we see, and in that dilemma, opens ourselves to new ways of perceiving and understanding.
Virtual Q & A Artist Talk with Russell Prather
Virtual Exhibition Tour
Russell Prather “Crust Mantle Core”, 24″x 19″x 15.5″, tinted acrylic medium on layers of polyester film, 2020 Photo courtesy of the artist
Russell Prather “Crust Mantle Core”, 24″x 19″x 15.5″, tinted acrylic medium on layers of polyester film, 2020 Photo courtesy of the artist
Russell Prather “Crust Mantle Core”, 24″x 19″x 15.5″, tinted acrylic medium on layers of polyester film, 2020 Photo courtesy of the artist
Russell Prather “Pod”, 12″ x 9″ x 15.5″, tinted acrylic medium on layers of polyester film, 2019 Photo courtesy of the artist
Russell Prather “Void in Blue”, 17” x 14” x 12”, tinted acrylic medium on layers of polyester film, Led light panel, 2019 Photo courtesy of the artist
The Art of the People: Contemporary Anishinaabe Artists
December 10 through February 28, 2021
L. C. and Margaret Walker Gallery A
About the Exhibition
Featuring nationally recognized and early career Native American artists, The Art of the People: Contemporary Anishinaabe Artists showcases artworks in a wide array of media that combine cultural traditions and imagery with contemporary sensibilities and themes. Organized in partnership with the Grand Valley State University Art Gallery and guest curator Jason Quigno, this invitational show will appear concurrently at the Muskegon Museum of Art and GVSU. Incorporating sculpture, painting, ceramics, beadwork, mixed media, and photography, the exhibition explores the ways in which these artists express their experiences in both traditional and non-traditional media, techniques, and subject matter. Through representational and abstract imagery and design the artists address issues of craft, history, identity, social and political justice, and popular culture.
Guest curator Jason Quigno is a sculptor and member of the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe. He works in in a variety of stone – granite, basalt, marble, limestone, and alabaster – transforming raw blocks into flowing forms. His work has garnered significant recognition and awards and he has completed numerous public commissions for communities and institutions around Michigan.
Levi Rickert: Standing Rock, Photographs of an Indigenous Movement
December 10 through February 28, 2021
L.C. and Margaret Walker Gallery A
Levi Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. This collection of photographs documents Rickert’s journey to Standing Rock in 2016 as part of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. These images capture not just the news making conflicts and clashes between protestors and private security firms at the site, but also the day-to-day experiences of the men and women joined in their shared call for action.
Jim Denomie is a nationally recognized, collected, and award winning Anishinaabe artist. His colorful, humorous paintings directly address historical, political, and cultural issues facing Native Americans in the U.S. Using traditional imagery, stereotypes, comic symbols, and pop culture imagery, Denomie presents playful, alluring narratives that, on closer inspection, reveal biting and thought-provoking challenges to historic and contemporary misperceptions, prejudices, and injustices. Learn more at http://www.bockleygallery.com/artist_denomie/
This exhibition, organized by the Muskegon Museum of Art, features new and favorite paintings by the artist, revealing the continuity and ongoing explorations within his work.
In the 1940s, the L.C. and Margaret Walker Foundation began to purchase significant prints for the Muskegon Museum of Art, including those by Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, and Francisco Goya. Today, the Walker Print Collection is a defining facet of our museum and boasts numerous rare, highly prized etchings and engravings. Over the decades, funds from the Walker Foundation have also provided for the acquisition of paintings by Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, and Edouard Vuillard. At any time, numerous works from the Walker gifts are on public display, pieces that have come to define the museum and its internationally recognized collection. Truly, the contributions of the Walker family have served to shape what the Muskegon Museum of Art has become. This exhibition presents highlights from the Walker family gifts, calling attention to how truly significant their legacy is to the museum’s identity.
Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947) La Porte de la Villa du Bosquet au Cannet Oil on canvas, 1944 Gift of the L.C. and Margaret Walker Foundation 1975.25
L.C. and Margaret Walker
Louis Carlisle Walker was a prominent business leader, politician, and philanthropist in West Michigan. He lived with his wife Margaret Mercer in North Muskegon until her death in 1956. L.C. Walker and Arch Wilkinson Shaw were the founding partners of the Shaw Walker Furniture Company, an iconic West Michigan firm that continues today as an acquisition of Knoll Furniture. An active supporter of the community, Walker was a member of numerous civic and business organizations. In addition to managing his business, he was the vice-president, president, and director of the Hackley Union National Bank from 1929-1958; helped organize and headed the Muskegon Federal Savings and Loan Association from 1933-1948; and served on the Muskegon Board of Education from 1917-1927. While on the Board of Education, Walker led the Library and Arts Committee, which oversaw museum operations.
Shaw and Betty Walker
After L.C. Walker’s death in 1963, Shaw Walker, L.C. Walker’s son, took over the family business and continued, with his wife Betty, to support both the community and the Muskegon Museum of Art.
In the 1980s, the Walker Foundation contributed a substantial gift to the Muskegon Museum of Art’s expansion. The Walker wing transformed what the museum was and what it could accomplish, adding new galleries, collection storage, staff offices, and work areas. When we look back to the major exhibitions and programs the MMA has hosted and organized in the past decades, few would have been possible without the Walker Galleries. The ongoing expansion of our permanent collection would likewise have been impossible without the new storage spaces the Walker gift enabled. What we were, and what we could be, were profoundly elevated by the Walker gift.
Museum Director Mary Riordan, far right, looks over plans for a new (L.C. & Margaret Walker) wing at the Muskegon Museum of Art on February 19, 1981. Chronicle photo by John Bunda.
New L.C. and Margaret Walker Fund
The Walkers also continue to regularly contribute funds to the purchase of art for the collection, highlights of which include works by Winfred Rembert, Deborah Butterfield, Maria Tomasula, Robert Riggs, John George Brown, Carducius Plantagenet Ream, and Robert Henri. Through a gift of the Walkers, the museum was also able to establish a new art acquisition fund, providing the largest opportunity for art buying since Charles Hackley’s founding gift. This new L.C. and Margaret Walker Fund, since its inception, has allowed for the purchase of significant paintings by William Glackens, Theodore Earl Butler, and Dale Nichols, among others. In our collection today, 262 works of art are credited all, or in part, to Walker family gifts.
William James Glackens (American, 1870-1938) Woman with Watch Oil on canvas, circa 1914 Museum Purchase, Gift of the L.C. and Margaret Walker Fund 2019.7
Shaw Walker died in 2009, at the age of 95. His wife Betty now sustains the Walker legacy and continues to work closely with the MMA. As the museum innovates and evolves, the Walker legacy endures as a defining core of who we are and hope to become in the future.
Programming support for this exhibition is provided by Art Bridges; the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
