Recent Acquisitions

Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw/Cherokee, b. 1972)
A Time for Change , 2020
Acrylic matte primer, screen print, and acrylic gloss varnish on handmade elk hide drum (varied edition of 24)
Hamilton Hazlehurst Memorial Fund Purchase, with additional support provided by Dr. and Mrs. E. Williams Ewers Gift for Fine Arts Fund
Collection of Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
2021.001

A Time for Change is a screen-printed, handmade elk hide drum, created by 2019 MacArthur Award-winning artist Jeffrey Gibson. The edition is produced in collaboration with Tandem Press, a publisher of fine art prints at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Based in Upstate New York, Gibson is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is of Cherokee heritage. He often utilizes objects associated with Indigenous culture such as leather, beadwork and drums. Gibson has received distinguished awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution), the TED Foundation, and the Jerome Hill Foundation. Gibson has mounted acclaimed solo exhibitions at museums including the Denver Art Museum, The Mississippi Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.

 

Pantaleone Mendoza (Colombian, 1855–1910)
Portrait of Julian Trujillo Largacha, 1878
Oil on canvas in frame
Gift of Lisa Carr, in honor of her father Albert Trujillo
24 x 30 inches

This oil portrait is of Julian Trujillo Largacha (1828-1883), President of Colombia from 1878-1880. It is signed and believed to be the official portrait by Pantaleone Mendoza, a recognized Colombian academic painter. 

 

Lubaina Himid (British, b. Zanzibar, 1954)
You say the magic words, Black Lives Matter), 2020

Archival pigment print 
Janice D. Forsythe Memorial Fund Purchase
2020.005

This print by was created for the Guardian newspaper by Turner prize-winning artist Lubaina Himid as the cover of a special issue on racism in the United Kingdom. As the artist explains, “The piece is a weaving together of found images of West African cloth, plus actual weaving of pieces of found colour photos from magazines. The text is from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and is meant, in this instance, to give us the idea that we can change things if we understand what we are changing, and why.” 

 

 

Hale Woodruff (American, 1900-1980)
Relics, 1935
Linocut
The Joseph L. May History of Prints Fund Purchase
Collection of Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
2020.002

Hale Woodruff was an American painter, draftsman, printer, and educator who is also acclaimed for his murals which drew upon sweeping themes from African American history. Woodruff moved with his mother to Nashville, Tennessee, at an early age. In adulthood, Woodruff studied at the John Herron Art Institute in Indiana, followed by the Académie Moderne in France. Upon his return to the United States in 1931, Woodruff turned away from the abstraction to focus on social issues, including scenes of Southern poverty and depictions of lynchings. In 1934 he traveled to Mexico and studied under famed muralist Diego Rivera. Woodruff did much to improve educational opportunities for black artists. From 1931 to 1946 he taught at Atlanta University, where he founded one of the first art departments in a Southern black university.

 

 

Paul Stephen Benjamin, (American)
New Black is Beautiful, 2020
Screen print on Arches paper
Janice D. Forsythe Memorial Fund Purchase
Collection of Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
2020.006

 

Sears Gallagher (America 1869–1955)
Manhattan Skyline, not dated
Etching
Gallery purchase
Collection of Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
2020.004

This print by Sears Gallagher of the New York skyline has a prominent focus on the Woolworth Building. Gallagher was a leading artist working in watercolor and etching during the early twentieth century. His landscapes and cityscapes often depict New England scenes, in particular of Boston, his hometown, and Monhegan Island, Maine.

 

 

 

Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935)
The Chimneys, Portsmouth, 1915
Etching
Purchased with Research Funds from Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities, Vanderbilt University
Collection of Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
2020.001

This etching is a significant work by Childe Hassam, one of the foremost American Impressionists who was internationally known during the course of his long career as a painter and printmaker. Hassam's oil-on-canvas painting  The Skyscraper Window , 1934, a major painting from late in his career, and among the most important works in the Fine Arts Gallery Collection. The subject of this print is also of great interest in relation to Hassam’s life and career. He was born in Dorchester (Boston), Massachusetts and worked in the Northeast. He is well known for the many paintings (in oil and watercolor) he made of the home and  gardens of poet Celia Thaxter (1835-94) on the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The view of Portsmouth from the water was one Hassam would have experienced en route to the Isles of Shoals or later, in his travels in northern New England.