The Collection

American paintings, sculpture, and works on paper from the colonial period to the 21st century

The art of the United States is a notable strength of the Palmer Museum of Art. The American paintings survey major developments of the nineteenth century, with concentrations in portraiture from the Early Republic, Hudson River School landscapes, genre scenes and still lifes from before and after the Civil War, and figural subjects by expatriates and impressionists around 1900. Highlights include paintings by Grafton Tyler Brown, Winslow Homer, William Trost Richards, and Benjamin West. The early decades of the twentieth century are well represented with important canvases by Pennsylvania (New Hope) impressionists, urban realist scenes and portraits by Ashcan School artists, notably John Sloan, Guy Pѐne du Bois, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, and signature works by modernists like Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Joseph Stella. The varied subjects and styles of American Scene painting of the 1930s and 1940s are amply represented in works by Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, Violet Oakley, Theresa Bernstein, and many other artists of the period.

Strengths in postwar American art include a rich array of works by sculptor Seymour Lipton, major paintings by northern California figurative artists, among them Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Nathan Oliveira, and Bay Area Funk artists Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest, and William T. Wiley. Important works by Philip Pearlstein, Jerome Witkin, and Simon Dinnerstein well represent the ascendance of figurative painting several decades after World War II.

The Palmer’s extensive collection of prints, drawings, and watercolors parallels and expands the above areas but with significant depth in works from the 1920s to the 1940s by, among others, Isabel Bishop, Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, Hedda Sterne, Dox Thrash, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Peggy Bacon, George Bellows, Gifford Beal, Minna Citron, Paul Keene, John Biggers, Joseph Stella, and Dorothy Dehner.

Ceremonial, ritual, and utilitarian objects representing diverse cultures throughout the continent of Africa

The Palmer Museum of Art’s collection of traditional African art includes articles for ceremonial and ritual practice, such as masks, textiles, and headdresses, as well as utilitarian objects ranging from razors, combs, and food containers to headrests, chairs, and gold weights. The objects represent a variety of cultures from countries in West, Central, and East Africa.

Objects from Andean and other Indigenous American cultures dating from before European contact

Central to the Palmer Museum of Art’s holdings of art from ancient America are a group of vessels representing a number of Andean cultures (Chavin, Moche, Recuay, Nasca, Lambayeque, Chimú, Chancay, among others) and spanning 2,000 years of the pre-colonial period in the Americas. Also important to the collection are a number of small clay figurines from unknown ancient Mexican cultures and a pair of Mayan limestone columns.

Ceramics, sculpture, and works on paper from China, Korea, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia from the 3rd century BCE to the 21st century CE

Ceramics are the strength of the Palmer Museum of Art’s Asian collection. Ranging in date from the third century BCE to the nineteenth century, the collection includes representative pots, dishes, and sculpture made in China, Japan, Korea, and Cambodia, and a significant group of porcelains made in China for export to western markets, particularly to England and America. Among the Asian ceramic collection are cooking vessels, vases, and other utilitarian wares, as well as a group of animal and figural sculptures excavated from tombs constructed in China during the Tang period (618–907 CE). Jade sculptures and various objects of everyday use carved in nineteenth-century China represent an important component of the Asian collection. Stone sculptures from Hindu temples in India and a Buddhist temple built during the Khmer period in Thailand represent two of the major sculptural traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Other works in the collection include a small group of Chinese and Japanese paintings and drawings.

Japanese woodblock prints constitute a second area of strength, with numerous examples of prints in styles and movements from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, including the medium’s leading artists such as Kitagawa Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Kunisada, and Ando Hiroshige.

20th- and 21st-century ceramics from England, Denmark, Japan, and the United States

Studio ceramics are well represented at the Palmer Museum of Art. The confluence of European and Japanese traditions in the early twentieth century can be seen in vessels by Bernard Leach and Shōji Hamada, who together founded a pottery at St. Ives, England, in 1920 to promote a return to craftsmanship in the wake of industrial mass-production. Their interest in mingei (“folk craft”) ceramics can be discerned in the work of St. Ives apprentices Hans Coper and Dame Lucie Rie and American ceramist Warren MacKenzie, who worked with Leach in the early 1950s. An adherence to traditional techniques is also evident in the pots of Japanese artists Tatsuzō Shimaoka, Kanjirō Kawai, Rakusei Takahashi, and Naokata Ueda. Contemporary Danish ceramics are a strength of the collection and include vessels by Axel Salton, Gertrud Vasegaard, Inger Thing, Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, Edith Sonne Bruun, Malene Müllertz, and Bodil Manz, among many others.

Paintings, sculpture, and works on paper from the Renaissance to the 21st century

The Palmer Museum of Art’s collection of European art features paintings, sculpture, and works on paper from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Old Master paintings form a strength of the collection and include Giovanni Baglione’s St. Sebastian Healed by an Angel, Charles-Antoine Coypel’s Joseph Recognized by his Brothers, and a St. Jerome by Guercino. Highlights of the works on paper in the collection include a broad selection of Renaissance and Baroque prints and drawings, British watercolors, nineteenth-century French lithographs and etchings, and early twentieth-century modernist prints.

Paintings, sculpture, photography, and works on paper created since 1980

The Palmer Museum of Art has collected the work of living artists since its founding a half century ago. Many of the artists represented came of age in the wake of the feminist and civil rights movements and explore issues related to gender, sexuality, race, and identity. The voices of women artists and artists of color are amply evident and remain a priority as the collection continues to grow. Among the artists represented are Kara Walker, Lorna Simpson, Tsibi Geva, Julie Heffernan, Willie Cole, Whitfield Lovell, Ross Bleckner, Jerry Kearns, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Hung Liu, Renee Stout, Kate Javens, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Enrique Chagoya, Roger Shimomura, and Roberto Lugo.

The Palmer is also dedicated to collecting contemporary photography and has works by Steve McCurry (’74), Gilbert and George, Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, Catherine Opie, Eleanor Antin, Gregory Crewdson, Ana Mendieta, William Wegman, Joel-Peter Witkin, Vik Muniz, Bill Jacobsen, and Yinka Shonibare, among others.

Photographs representing a history of the medium from the 1840s to the present

Photography is a growing area of strength for the Palmer Museum of Art. The permanent collection currently includes more than 1,500 photographs (approximately 13% of the collection). These holdings represent the broad history of the medium from its inception to the present day. Early practitioners of the medium represented include Mathew Brady, Samuel Broadbent, Julia Margaret Cameron, Félix Bonfils, André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, Alfred A. Hart, William Henry Jackson, and Carleton Watkins, as well as late nineteenth-century Pictorialists Edward Curtis, Peter Henry Emerson, Clarence White, and Eva Watson-Schütze.  

  

The permanent collection includes works by many noted twentieth-century photographers including Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Carlotta Corpron, Harold Edgerton, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Consuelo Kanaga, Barbara Morgan, Gordon Parks, Charles Sheeler, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Karl Struss, and James Van Der Zee. Of special note are a group of some thirty Russian/Soviet photographs; 151 photographs by Andy Warhol (101 Polaroids, 50 gelatin silver); 250+ works by Konrad Cramer; and fifty works by Brett Weston.

  

The Palmer is also dedicated to collecting contemporary photography (both analogue and digital) and has works by Eleanor Antin, Gregory Crewdson, Adam Fuss, Gilbert & George, Steve McCurry (’74), Ana Mendieta, Vik Muniz, Isaac Scott, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Jerry Uelsmann, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, William Wegman, and Joel-Peter Witkin, among others. Recent acquisitions include digital prints by contemporary photographers Kristin Capp, Ralph Gibson, Walter Iooss, Alen MacWeeney, Joyce Tenneson, and Peter Turnley,

Late 20th- and 21st-century art glass from the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia

The Palmer Museum of Art’s collection of contemporary glass has grown exponentially in the last decade, more than a half century after the founding of the international studio glass movement in the early 1960s. Numbering more than 150 objects, the collection features works of dazzling variety and techniques by pioneering glass artists, including Harvey Littleton, Dale Chihuly, Lino Tagliapietra, Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, Ann Wolff, Marvin Lipofsky, Toots Zynsky, and Therman Statom. Also well represented are vessel-based and sculptural objects by emerging and mid-career artists working in glass today from North America, England, Australia, Scandinavia, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Japan.

Drawings, prints, watercolors, and other paper-based mediums

Works on paper form the largest collection area for the Palmer Museum of Art, comprising the full range of print mediums — woodcuts, engravings, etchings, lithographs, screenprints, etc. — as well as drawings, watercolor, pastels, photographs, and collages from all corners of the world. Strengths include American drawings, European and American prints dating from the sixteenth century to the present, American photographs, and Japanese woodblock prints.