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Saturday, January 8, 2011

AMERICAN MASTERPIECES FEATURES NJ ARTIST’S WORK

Joan Snyder/Intimate Works

Joan Snyder: Intimate Works
WHERE:
Mabel Smith Douglass Libraries, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick
WHEN: January 17 - June 5, 2011
Gallery hours are Monday through Friday. 9 AM – 4:30 PM. and weekends by appointment. The galleries are free and open to the public.
732.932.3726

The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, a program of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art (IWA) in partnership with the Rutgers University Libraries, is presenting a 45-year survey of small paintings by Joan Snyder, who has been named the 2010-11 Estelle Lebowitz Visiting Artist in Residence at Rutgers.

The paintings on view in the library range in size from the smalles,t which is 8 x 8 inches, to the largest, which is 24 x 24 inches, and date from 1965 to 2010. Throughout her career, Snyder has combined oil, watercolor, acrylic, pencil, glitter, fabric, bark, straw, herbs, beads, paper maché and other materials in her paintings to create uniquely fluid surfaces. Her paint is applied as thick and heavy, light and washy, or propelled onto and dripped down the canvas to create vibrant expressionistic works. Though small in size, these works are monumental in content, and represent the artist’s development during the past four decades.

Snyder will give the Lebowitz Public Lecture at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers (71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick) on Sunday, February 13, 2011. The lecture is open to the public and will begin at 2 PM with a reception to follow. There is a $10 general admission fee, a $5 fee for Zimmerli members and it is free to Rutgers faculty, staff, and students. For lecture reservations call 732.932.7237 x 615.

Snyder is an internationally acclaimed artist and pioneering feminist artist, who graduated from Douglass College (BA, 1962) and Rutgers in 1966 with a MFA. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award (2007) and will be inducted into Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni in May 2011.

The Douglass Library exhibition, curated by Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin (directors of the IWA), will inaugurate a series of activities planned for 2011-12 to celebrate the Dana Women Artists Series’ 40th Anniversary. Snyder, (born 1940 in Highland Park, NJ), founded the award-winning Women Artists Series in 1971. It is the oldest continuous running exhibition space in the United States dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established contemporary women artists.

Please note that the Zimmerli Art Museum will mount a prints retrospective exhibition to coincide with the Dana Women Artists Series show, entitled Dancing with the Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963-2010. This exhibit has been organized by Marilyn Symmes of the Zimmerli and will be on view from January 29 - May 29, 2011.