Opening Saturday, May 4, 2019 at the Newfields in Indianapolis, “Life and Legacy: Portraits from the Clowes Collection” features many of the Museum’s most beloved paintings, including Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, painted when he was 23 years old. The show remains on display in the Allen Whitehill Clowes Special Exhibition Gallery through August 18, 2019.
The exhibition will focus on the history of portraiture, the process of painting a portrait, the various ways in which artists portrayed their subjects and the many functions that portraits served across the centuries. “In our age of digital photography, it’s easy to forget that portraits were once precious objects that were difficult and expensive to make,” said Dr. Kjell Wangensteen, Assistant Curator of European Art and curator of the exhibition. To emphasize the point, visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to create their own portraits at a drawing station.
In 1921, Dr. Clowes, a research scientist at Eli Lilly and Company, helped develop a process to mass-produce insulin, then a revolutionary new treatment for diabetes. His work saved millions of lives and allowed Clowes to pursue his passion for collecting great art. Much of the Clowes Collection is on display in this exhibition and is considered to be among the finest collections of European art in the Midwest.
“The more I researched the Clowes Collection, the more it became apparent that each work was uniquely important to Dr. Clowes,” expressed Wangensteen. “Portraits seem to have especially fascinated him, as can be seen from the extraordinary quality of the ones he acquired. So it became clear that a fresh look at this group of works would serve nicely as a kind of ‘portrait’ of Clowes himself.”
For more information and activities surrounding this exhibition, see: https://discovernewfields.org/calendar/clowes-portraits
Editor’s note: Currently on view is “Fashion Redefined: Miyake, Kawakubo, Yamamoto” is an exhibition of contemporary Japanese fashion that celebrates the lasting legacy of these Japanese designers and their impact on the world of fashion in the past 40 years.
The exhibition showcases 55 superb garments by legendary Japanese fashion designers Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. Goers can see how these innovative designers radically transformed the fashion industry by introducing Japanese aesthetics to the global fashion community. More at: https://discovernewfields.org/calendar/japanese-fashion. Curated by Niloo Paydar, Curator of Textile and Fashion Arts, the exhibition will be on view through January 5, 2020 in the Paul Textile and Fashion Arts Galleries.