Happy returns

Polly Knipp Hill, Green Benches, St. Petersburg, c. 1940, etching, 8.25 by 9.75 inches.

By MARY ANN MARGER, Times Art Critic

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 26, 2001

In the slow gallery days of late summer, the Museum of Fine Arts brings out deliciously varied works usually supplanted by visiting exhibits.

ST. PETERSBURG -- It's deja vu time at the Museum of Fine Arts. In a summer exhibit of 20th century art, curator Jennifer Hardin has brought out of storage a few gems acquired from shows gone by.

Some of these works are too massive to be displayed in the jewel box building year-round. They adorn the Mackey Gallery until the end of September, while an assortment of smaller works are on view in the string of rooms beyond. Now, in the off-season, they find display space in the galleries usually reserved for visiting exhibits.

Jimmy Ernst's elegantly colorful Sea of Grass, an interpretation of the Everglades, and Jeffrey Kronsnoble's Box IX G, a brilliantly executed painting of an assemblage, were both signature pieces in shows of the past. Robert Vickrey's softly executed Magic Lantern introduced many to the medium of egg tempera. Lila Katzen's Rose Triad seems to flow despite its medium, brass and steel. Her outdoor work, Curled Fan in corten steel, was installed behind the museum following her show here in 1979.

Most nostalgic is Polly Knipp Hill's etching, Green Benches, St. Petersburg, which stokes reminiscences of downtown in the 1940s. Before her death in 1990, Hill frequently exhibited portrayals of a quaint past that charmed the local community.

But this show travels beyond memory lane to borrowed works and others, here but not exhibited prominently before.

Robert Vickrey, Magic Lantern, egg tempera on gesso, 30 by 24 inches.

Rudy Autio paints Matisselike images on stoneware in Showtime. A founder of the studio ceramics movement, Autio has become a favorite of area potters during his visits here. This work was created at St. Petersburg Clay Company.

Frank Rampolla's Seated Nude, from Eric Lang Peterson's collection, has the explosive, visceral style of Francis Bacon. Equally strong is Ben Shahn's Frederick Douglass, a lithograph of the famed abolitionist.

Harold Edgerton enables us to expand our visual capacity through stop-action photographs such as Accelerator Bullet Hits Apple. The law firm of Trenam, Kemker loaned works through collecting partner Bill Zewadski. They include works by Cindy Sherman and Sandy Skoglund, two artists known nationally for their unusual postmodernist approaches to colorful staged environments.

The show is visually balanced between images new and old and has enough information on wall labels for thoughtful probing.

Gollay Collection

Benjamin Gollay was a lawyer and friend of many New York School artists, also known as abstract expressionists. In exchange for legal advice, he was often invited to select a work of art. His daughter, Elinor Gollay, has presented his estate of 70 works to the museum on extended loan. From them she has curated a modest show of 16 works, now on view in the Bank of America gallery at the museum.

Most of the names are lesser knowns -- Norman Bluhm, Warren Brandt, Dorothy Smith Dehner -- but Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning are also represented. The de Kooning was a wedding gift to Gollay and his wife, Jean. Also on view is a painting by Robert De Niro, not the actor but his father.

Eventually we should see the entire collection, even if one gallery at a time. Ms. Gollay and her husband, Rex Brasell, area residents, also loaned a bead collection displayed in the Stenquist gallery.

Currier & Ives, Lorena C. Hannahs Gallery

The lithographs of Currier & Ives occupy an important place in Americana. From 1835 to 1907 the company made fine-quality prints that were then hand-painted. They sold for prices ranging from 20 cents to $6. In this way, the general public was able to acquire original art.

Subjects range from cute puppies and kittens to Civil War battle scenes. Frances Palmer's A Midnight Race on the Mississippi, one of the largest works on view, depicts two paddle-wheel steamers, the Natchez and the Eclipse, their smokestacks trailing puffs of black beneath the light of a full moon. It was a heated race, literally: Sometimes steamboat engines in such contests would rise to high temperatures, causing them to explode.

E-mail Mary Ann Marger at marger@sptimes.com.

Art review

Tradition and Innovation in Later Twentieth-Century Art," "Currier and Ives Prints: A Window onto American Taste, 1851-1891" and "Art of the New York School from the Benjamin Gollay Collection," all at the Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, through Sept. 30. Admission: $6; seniors $5; students $2. Free on Sundays. Call (727) 896-2667 or check www.fine-arts.org

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