Home Coming

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Selected paintings and works on paper from The Grace Museum’s permanent collection will be featured in the second floor galleries. The old adage, home is where the heart is, is evident in the rural scenes created by American Regionalists, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood who created optimistic views of the American heartland during the Great Depression. In the 1970s, Romare Bearden created celebratory images of African American life. Childhood memories may have informed Martha Simkins’ 1920s intimate view of two young girls reading as seen through light impressionistic brushstrokes. Nils Hogner’s urban scene of bustling New York City in 1939 bears little resemblance to the New York City of today. Prints by William Meyerowitz, Lewis Martin and Reginald March also present nostalgic views New York City in the late 1920s. Social Realist, Raphael Soyer’s Dance Lesson, 1965 is typical of his interest in men and women viewed in contemporary settings.

Whether you are drawn to the red-dirt country road in the foreground Edward Eisenlohr’s Country Church in Palo Pinto of 1935 or Peter Hurd’s vision of progress on the prairie, San Angelo Courthouse, 1929, you will find a work of art that will prompt a memory of what home was and is for you. Thomas Wolfe’s statement, “You can’t go home again,” is only partially true. No matter whether the scene depicts a landscape, interior, family member, activity, street or structure, through art we can revisit and reconsider what draws our hearts toward home.

This summer The Grace Museum will present three FINDING HOME exhibitions curated to examine the ways in which artists have explored issues of identity and memory in the context of home. Home is a place laden with emotion and memory, and is inextricably tied to a sense of identity. Artists Roger Colombik & Jerolyn Bahm-Colombik’s site-specific installation will address the current dynamics of establishing a new home in a foreign land. A photography exhibition will examine the conscience and complexly of photographing strangers in their homeland. Real and imaged views of people at home and at work will be explored through the artwork selected for a group exhibition curated to rediscover the journey of coming home.