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Recently Acquired works
The Wright is actively working to diversifying its holdings, here are some recent additions to our collection.
Dakota Mace
Dakota Mace
(Diné (Navajo), b. 1991)
Dootłʼizh (Blue), 2018
Handmade abaca paper, seeds, and indigo dye
Museum Purchase, 2021.5.1
For the Dinétah (Navajo people), the relationship with the land and the natural materials that it provides is paramount. Mace writes, “the yákʼaashbąąh (horizon) and keyáh (land) are never separate entities, they always meet in the distance, when hayííłką́ (dawn) brings the white light of the morning and hiłi- ijįį́ʼ́(dusk) brings the deep blues of night.”
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson
(American, b. 1960)
Counting, 1991
Photogravure and screenprint
Museum Purchase, 2021.3.1
The evocation of history in the photographs’ documentary qualities, combined with the phrases and numbers that measure time by hours, years, or the rhythm of counting bricks, twists, braids, and locks, relates the recursive act of counting to the ways that we recall our memories and construct our identities. Counting compels us to recognize and address our latent beliefs—about history, subjectivity, ourselves— bringing to the surface processes of identification and understanding that we so often uncritically accept. ---Elissa Weichbrodt, PhD
Arthur Dove
Arthur Dove
(American, 1880-1946)
Centerport series, 1940
Watercolor
Gift of Richard Dexter’70, 2021.1.2
In 1938, the noted American modernist painter Arthur Dove, moved from Geneva, NY to Centerport, NY. Dove's work evolved during the eight years he had remaining to him before his death in 1946 so that it became more lyrical, what he described as "a sequence of formations" similar to musical harmonies. The work he did at Centerport is considered among his most distinctive.
Kara Walker
Kara Walker
(American, b. 1969)
Freedom: A Fable, 1997
Laser-cut paper pop-up book, bound in brown leather (as issued)
Museum Purchase, 2020
© Kara Walker
Kara Walker is known for creating black-and-white silhouettes that explore themes of African American racial identity, often depicting scenes of slavery, conflict, or violence. Using her characteristic cut-out technique, this popup book illustrates Walker's examination and questioning of the historical construction of blackness in American history.
Terrence A. Reese
Terrence A. Reese
Richard Hunt, 2020
Color photograph
Museum Purchase, 2020
Reflections is a documentary-style photography series, which captures the personal living spaces of renowned African Americans whose lives and careers have addressed the fundamental political, economic, and social realities of the 20th century and beyond. In each photographic image, a mirror is strategically placed and, the subject is reflected in it. This image depicts the highly accomplished American sculptor Richard Howard Hunt in his studio.
Rafael Francisco Salas
Rafael Francisco Salas
“I don’t stand out all night in empty fields and call your name no more,” 2018
Oil on canvas
Museum Purchase, 2020
Rafael takes much of his inspiration from rural America, but it’s not about sunsets and wheat fields. Salas notes, “my own moods and my own look on life, there is a darkness there, so my art work has always sort of reflected an element of bleakness or sadness.” Salas has a white mother and a Mexican-American father and says he struggled to find his identity. “I have to say, mixed-race identity is hard. Do I have an authentic view of Mexican culture? Do I have an authentic view of rural white culture? And the answer is yes and no.”
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Sowrou and Mustapha, 2014
Dnindy, Senegal
Digital Print
Museum Purchase, 2020
Through witnessing the everyday lives of the Baye Fall, and the Senegalese cities in which they dwell, this series shows how indigenous ideology and pre- and post-colonial politics have influenced the contemporary spiritual practice of the Baye Fall, as well as their social, economic and political philosophies (Laylah Amatullah Barrayn). Barrayn is an award-winning documentary and portrait photographer working in the medium for 20 years. Through photography, Barrayn engages communities of the global Black diaspora on how identity is expressed collectively and as individuals.
Linda Benedict-Jones
Linda Benedict-Jones
Dans l’escalier, 6/10 1975
Gelatin silverprint
Museum Purchase, 2019
Benedict-Jones is a photographer and curator who began taking photographs in the 1960s. In 1969 she moved to Europe for 10 years, living and working in Portugal, France, and the UK photographing urban and rural environments before returning to America. Recently the Graves Gallery (Sheffield, UK) drew attention to Benedict-Jones, pointing out the artist’s “talent for using black and white photography to capture a poignant sense of place marked by human presence and absence.”
Dans l’escalier, 6/10 1975
Gelatin silverprint
Museum Purchase, 2019
Benedict-Jones is a photographer and curator who began taking photographs in the 1960s. In 1969 she moved to Europe for 10 years, living and working in Portugal, France, and the UK photographing urban and rural environments before returning to America. Recently the Graves Gallery (Sheffield, UK) drew attention to Benedict-Jones, pointing out the artist’s “talent for using black and white photography to capture a poignant sense of place marked by human presence and absence.”
André Blaise
André Blaise
(Haitian, b. 1961)
Untitled, 1987
Oil on wood
Gift of Marshfield Clinic and Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2019.16.1
Ti-Andre Blaise is the youngest of the four Blaise brothers, all well-known Haitian painters. After experimenting with various styles, Andre settled on painting fish. He portrays them with human characteristics, great humor, and the technical virtuosity that is characteristic of the Blaise family.
Helen Hyde
Helen Hyde
(American, 1869—1919)
Children with a Japanese Lantern, 1904
Watercolor
Museum Purchase, 2018.18.1
In the early twentieth century, the pioneering female artist Helen Hyde moved to Japan and mastered the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking. Hyde’s life in Tokyo and Nikko, as well as sojourns in China, is visually documented in prints and watercolors. The Wright has had a long history of acquiring Hyde’s work—making its first purchase from the artist in 1916. We are thrilled to present this piece, the museum’s first painting purchased by the artist.
(American, 1869—1919)
Children with a Japanese Lantern, 1904
Watercolor
Museum Purchase, 2018.18.1
In the early twentieth century, the pioneering female artist Helen Hyde moved to Japan and mastered the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking. Hyde’s life in Tokyo and Nikko, as well as sojourns in China, is visually documented in prints and watercolors. The Wright has had a long history of acquiring Hyde’s work—making its first purchase from the artist in 1916. We are thrilled to present this piece, the museum’s first painting purchased by the artist.
Theodore Czebotar
Theodore Czebotar
(American, 1915-1996)
Country Bathers, n.d.
Oil on canvas
Gift of Theodore Czebotar Collection, LLC and Kohler
Foundation, Inc., 2019.18.4
In the fall of 1936, Czebotar turned the sketches from his wanderings into watercolors and oils. In a stroke of good fortune, his work caught the attention of prominent American Regionalist John Steuart Curry, who recommended Czebotar to his own agent, Maynard Walker. For the next decade his work was shown at noted galleries and museums across the country including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Zhang Kechun
Zhang Kechun
(Chinese, b. 1980)
People Crossing the Yellow River with a Photo of Mao Zedong
From The Yellow River series, 2012
Archival Inkjet Print
Museum Purchase, 2019.6.1
This photograph was featured in the 2019 exhibition at the Wright, Heaven Ren Earth: The Yellow River of China, and shows Mao Zedong completing his famous swim across the Yangtze River in 1966, proving that, at age 70, he was still a vigorous leader who could lead the country. Zhang Kechun’s images for this series are still and dreamlike, and focus on national identity and the significance of the Yellow River in modern Chinese life.
Edna Hibel
Edna Hibel
(American, 1917-2014)
Portuguese Woman on a Donkey, 1967
Oil glaze on board
Gift by transfer from the Hibel Museum of Art
2019.4.3
Edna Hibel was best known for her Impressionistic landscapes, subjects from her vast travels, and motherhood, inspired by the work of both Mary Cassatt and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Born in 1917 in Boston, MA, Hibel went on to study painting at the Boston Museum School of Fine Art, graduating in 1939. She founded the Edna Hibel Museum of Fine Art in 1977 in Jupiter, FL on the campus of Florida Atlantic University. Though praised and awarded throughout her life, HIbel is another in a long line of overlooked female artists.
John Wilde
John Wilde
(American, 1919-2006)
Still Life with Onions, 1954
Oil on panel
Gift of Rick Dexter, 2018.15.1
John Wilde studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he later taught for thirty-four years. Wilde created small, detailed Surrealist-like paintings that showed surreal nude figures, still-life, animals, and objects in strange landscapes. He detested the modern painting style of the 1950s and ’60s, with its “pounds and pounds and layers of paint, thick as sin and nauseatingly viscous,” and preferred to live away from its influence in the “boondocks” of Wisconsin (Wilde, What His Mother’s Son Hath Wrought, 1988).
Suzanne Duchamp
Suzanne Duchamp
(French, 1889–1963)
Untitled (Self Portrait Frontal), ca. 1920
Pencil on paper
Museum Purchase, 2018.6.1
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
In 1920, Suzanne showed several of her works at the Salon des indépendants (Paris) along with Francis Picabia and Jean Crotti. By 1922, Suzanne had begun making figurative paintings in a naive style resembling the work of Rousseau and Grandma Moses. For decades, Suzanne Duchamp has been largely overshadowed by her artist brothers and husband. This was an important acquisition for the Wright, an early work complimenting the three later paintings curated by the museum.
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