 – Currently on view at the Newport Art Museum through April 16, 2023, “Joseph Norman: Works from the Permanent Collection” is an exhibition that showcases a selection…){kind=link}
NEWPORT, RI (PNAN) – Currently on view at the Newport Art Museum through April 16, 2023, “Joseph Norman: Works from the Permanent Collection” is an exhibition that showcases a selection of prints and paintings, where over the years, sixty-one of Norman’s works were acquired, making it the largest museum collection of the artist’s work. The show also features recent works on loan from the artist.
Blurring the boundaries between realism and abstraction, he makes powerful and evocative works of art that cover many subjects and issues, such as racial identity, portraiture, self-portraiture, history, and place throughout his career.
Norman’s works are predominantly in black and white, characteristically dense compositions of forms, but also works that are layered with metaphor and meaning. These works include prints from the series “Wandering Muse,” “Tenements,” and “Out at Home: Negro Baseball League” and others.
From his small detailed prints to large narrative works, Norman shows his mastery of printmaking, painting, and storytelling such as in this exhibition, includes three of his rarely seen large lithographic triptychs, which were inspired by personal events, nature, and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
For more information see: https://newportartmuseum.org/
About
Born in Chicago in 1957, Joseph Norman is the fifth of six children to parents who were the grandchildren of slaves. After earning his M.A. at the University of Illinois and an M.F.A. at the University of Cincinnati in 1986, he moved to Rhode Island to launch his career. It was then that he began teaching and exhibiting at the Newport Art Museum.
Norman is a Professor of Art at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia where has also served as the Chairman of the Painting and Drawing Department and Founder of Study Abroad in Latin America, Cuba, Costa Rica, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. A world class draftsman and printmaker, he has works of art in museum collections around the country, including the MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the RISD Museum among others.