OKCMOA ‘First Look’ exhibit features new acquisitions

Last Updated on December 15, 2023, 8:59 PM | Published: December 15, 2023

OKLAHOMA CITY — Hot on the heels of the already successful – and staggeringly gorgeous – “Raven and the Box of Daylight,” the Oklahoma City Museum of Art is presenting a one-gallery mini-exhibition to showcase a selection of the remarkable new works and loans they’ve acquired over the past few years.

Opening Saturday, December 16th, “First Look: New to the Museum” puts a number of newly acquired paintings, photographs, and mixed-media works in front of OKCMOA visitors for the very first time, boasting some major names and even a few famous ties to Oklahoma’s own art history.

“It’s all kind of related to different ideas of space, how we portray space and how we create certain spaces,” said OKCMOA Curatorial Assistant Kristen Pignuolo. “And it also allows us to show how the museum’s collection is growing.”

Juxtapositions

The works presented in “First Look” share little common ground or provenance, but the museum’s curatorial staff have taken care to arrange and order the pieces throughout the gallery to highlight similar artistic approaches or themes, but also to create a few purposefully striking groupings.

Easily the exhibit’s largest and grandest work is a massive, mountainous landscape scene from 19th Century American painter Edmund Darch Lewis, the kind of solidly traditional work that you might expect from the Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (where, indeed, it used to hang before OKCMOA’s acquisition.)

But placed in this context, the imposing, impossibly idyllic landscape now hangs alongside a series of bleak, gritty 20th Century photographs by Irish lensman Alen MacWeeney and an impressively deceptive panoramic photo depicting a collapsing inner-city oasis, subtly composited together with modern tools.

Displayed together in this way, they form an unintentional-yet-powerful arc examining how our perception of – and connection to – the natural world has changed and perhaps distorted over the past two centuries.

“I really think it’s an interesting juxtaposition,” Pignuolo said, “thinking about both real and imagined landscapes and how humans can impact them.”

Local Flavor

The diverse, widely varied works that make up the exhibit have been culled from numerous smaller acquisitions, donations, lucky opportunities, and loans, but as the museum is fielding potential new additions to their collection, they’re clearly always keeping an eye out for artists and works with strong ties to Oklahoma.

“First Look,” then, offers visitors a chance to see a number of pieces from important Oklahoma artists on the museum walls for the very first time.

Upon entering the gallery, guests are welcomed by a quintet of stark, pop-art statements in the form of paper works by longtime Oklahoma resident Ed Ruscha (including the notably recent “Land Use” from 2022) providing both tribute and commentary on our state.

But though Ruscha may be the most popular name in the exhibit, and his pieces the most overtly Oklahoma-centric, he’s certainly not the only OK artist represented in “First Look.”

“That’s actually by our first director,” Pignuolo said, referencing an unassumingly small, but vibrantly colorful landscape scene by Oklahoma artistic legend – and founding director of the Oklahoma Art Center – Nan Sheets.

Placed directly alongside the mammoth landscape by Lewis, Sheets’ piece provides a fantastic counterpoint by presenting in a drastically smaller scale, but a dramatically enhanced, wonderfully colorful expression of nature not attempted in Lewis’ traditionalism.

Another important longtime Oklahoma resident, Yugoslavian-born sculptor and mixed-media artist Alexandra Alaupovic is represented with a characteristically immaculate silver work standing in appropriate contrast to the exhibit’s many natural works and true-life photographs.

“This show allows for interesting connections between different mediums and time periods that we wouldn’t necessarily think to make,” Pignuolo said, “and people seem to especially enjoy these pieces that have particular resonance in Oklahoma City.”

A Big 2024

Part of presenting all of these pieces together right now was a desire by the museum to showcase the development and evolution of the permanent collection ahead of some hotly anticipated exhibitions that are expected to make 2024 a banner year for OKCMOA.

First up is “Magnificent Beauty: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Art of the Flower” in March, a new show developed by OKCMOA that uses O’Keeffe’s legendary depictions as a springboard to explore how artists across media have approached the flower.

“It has works by O’Keeffe and also the photographer Imogen Cunningham,” Pignuolo explained, “who was a photographer working about the same time as O’Keeffe, but on the West Coast. And it shows how they interpret, in their own different ways, flowers as a subject in their own separate, modernist artistic perspectives.”

Beyond that, all eyes are looking toward “Edith Head: Hollywood’s Costume Designer” in June.

The retrospective of the Hollywood giant’s career as the most celebrated costumer in cinema has been generating exceptional buzz since it was announced that OKCMOA was planning and organizing the exhibition.

“It’s going to take up the entire third floor,” said OKCMOA Director of Communications Laura Rudicel. “And with the Oscars coming up and everyone looking at Hollywood right now, there’s just so many exciting things we can do.”

“First Look: New to the Museum” opens Saturday, December 16th and runs until March 17th.

For museum hours, tickets, events, and more formation, visit okcmoa.com.

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