Sandra Dal Poggetto,  America Fork 4,
oil, oil pastel, charcoal, graphite, buckskin on canvas,
Courtesy the artist

Sandra Dal Poggetto: Meditations on the Field
July 17-September 27, 2014 | Paxson and Meloy Galleries

Helena-based artist Sandra Dal Poggetto is featured in a solo exhibition of new and recent large-scale works. Dal Poggetto paints abstract images which incorporate fragments of the western landscape—hide, feathers, wood and wire—to approach the experience of the natural world.

She draws on and deconstructs both Euro-American pictorial language and American Indian visual traditions to create uneasy syntheses which Pulitzer-Prize winning author/critic Mark Stevens describes as “truthful reflection[s] of our culture’s complex relations to the landscape of the West.”

In addition, Dal Poggetto will select objects from MMAC’s Permanent Collection to illustrate different philosophical and aesthetic understandings of the human relationship to the natural world. Through Dal Poggetto’s re-contextualization of these works, she probes, questions and reveals the past, calling for a renewed connection with the natural world.

Nicholas Galanin, Things Are Looking Native, Native’s Looking Whiter,
c. 2012, photo composition
Courtesy of the artist

The exhibition title comes from author Sherman Alexie, who encourages audiences to shift their notions of Native peoples away from narrow, stereotypical views. He states, "This is not a silent movie, our voices will save our lives."

Featured are works by Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Susie Silook, Da-ka-xeen Mehner and Nicholas Galanin, four Alaska Native artists who create contemporary installation-based work that explores gender, memory, race, nationality and cultural heritage.

Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). This exhibition was organized by the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, California in partnership with the Anchorage Museum, Alaska.

Koitsu Tsuchiya, Snow at Miyajima,
c. 1950, Woodblock print,
Courtesy the Louden Collection

The Japanese Woodblock: An Extension of the Impermanent 
February 20 - April 19, 2014 | Meloy and Paxson Galleries

The exhibition features original woodblock prints from the late 18th to the early 20th century by Japanese masters including Toyokuni, Hiroshige, Kunisada, Kuniyoshi, Koson Ohara, Hiroshi Yoshida and Hiroyuki Tajima, as well as French immigrant Paul Jacoulet. The prints are on loan from the George and Claire Louden Collection. The Loudens were employed by National Geographic and the United States Foreign Service and organized exhibitions for United States Embassies around the world.

This exhibition was organized by the Carr Gallery in Idaho Falls, Idaho and travels under the auspices of the Montana Art Gallery Directors Association. Also featured are Asian works from the MMAC Permanent Collection and two of the Friendship Dolls gifted to the U.S. by Japan in 1927: Miss Tottori, on loan from the Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre and Miss Aomori, on loan from Alan Scott Pate. Also featured is the Hokusai Great Wave Project, created by the screenprinting class of UM Professor of Art Elizabeth Dove.

Maria Blanchard, Le Joueur De Luth / The Lute Player,
Oil on canvas, ca. 1917-1918
Private Collection

This exhibition focuses on the power of the figure through Modernist paintings and sculptures by major 19th and early 20th century artists including Jean Arp, María Blanchard, Marc Chagall, Giorgio De Chirico, Sonia Delaunay, Leon De Smet, Barbara Hepworth, Fernand Léger, André Masson, Jean Metzinger, Pablo Picasso and Georges Rouault.  The exhibition links visual art with music, dance, opera and literature.

This exhibition illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of Modernism, focusing on the intersection of visual and literary arts, combining MMAC Permanent Collection artworks with loans to highlight rare etchings and lithographs by Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault and Jean Signovert, among others.  Many are by artists who worked with publishers and authors such as Ambrose Vollard, Fernand Moulot and Henry Kahnweiler, to create works for publications.