UNM Mourns the Loss of a Great Scholar


Dr. David Craven, pictured left

New Acquisitions: Frederick Hammersley


Frederick Hammersley
Right On, 1995, oil on linen,
purchased with support from
the Keller Memorial Endowment
and Raymond Jonson Gallery Fund,
Copyright Frederick Hammersley
Foundation. T#2012.5

Frederick Hammersley

No title, 1941, graphite and conte
crayon on paper, gift of the Frederick
Hammersley Foundation, Copyright
Frederick Hammersley Foundation. 2011.8.1

John Chamberlain at Guggenheim Museum
February 24 - May 9, 2012



John Chamberlain
Untitled, 1966,
urethane foam, cord, paint, cloth and wooden beads, 72.600

The Art Museum has lost an outstanding scholar, colleague and friend, the UNM Distinguished Professor of Art History, David L. Craven, who died of an apparent heart attack on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

Dr. Craven was a highly regarded professor at UNM and a world authority in the fields of Twentieth Century Art from Latin America; post-1945 American art and Critical Theory; and, the Philosophy of Methods in Art History and Visual Culture. Notable among his publications are, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910-1990, which was nominated for a 2004 Mitchell Prize; Diego Rivera as Epic Modernist; The New Concept of Art and Popular Culture in Nicaragua Since the Revolution in 1979; Abstract Expression as Cultural Critique: Dissent During the McCarthy Period, which received broad critical acclaim, and, Dialectical Conversions: Donald Kuspit's Art Criticism. He was preparing for publication in 2012 six new articles on art history subjects in the United States, Mexico and England.


David traveled the world as a visiting professor lecturing in more than 100 universities and museums in the United States, and in Guatemala, Russia, Mexico, Spain, Germany, England and France, among other countries. He was recognized with numerous awards including a Medal for Excellence by the state of New York; a Faculty Acknowledgement Award at University of New Mexico in 2003; and he was chosen as the 2007 “Rudolf Arnheim Professor” at Humboldt University in Berlin; and he received over fifteen fellowships and grants to further his scholarship including those from the American Council for Learned Studies; National Endowment for the Arts; National Endowment for the Humanities; Rockefeller Foundation; Ministerio de Cultura de Espana; and, the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes de Mexico.








Over one hundred works of art by the late Frederick Hammersley (American, 1919-2009.) were acquired by the UNM Art Museum in late December 2011. Among this group is the Museum’s purchase of Right On, 1995, from the “Organics” series, thirty rare figure drawings, ca. 1941 – 1985, and, a complete set of seventy-two computer prints, created in 1969, all of which were generously donated by the Frederick Hammersley Foundation.

The President and Executive Director, Kathleen Shields, has said, “The Frederick Hammersley Foundation is very pleased to donate these works to the University of New Mexico Art Museum. As one of our first gifts in Frederick Hammersley's name, it exemplifies our mission to promote the value of art in the life of the community through donating to public, and especially educational, institutions with which he was associated.”

Hammersley’s "Organics" paintings (produced in 1964, and again from 1982 into the 2000s) are composed of evocative shapes inspired by the natural world as evidenced in the Museum’s Right On, wherein highly-keyed and neutral-toned forms interweave and interlock, the sensuality of which evokes real life, or organic structures, in complete abstraction. These complex, small-scale arrangements are at once baroque and purely minimalist constructions.

Frederick Hammersley is critically acclaimed and most well-known as an essential contributor to  “hard-edge” painting of the late 1950’s and early ‘60s, a trend in non-objective art which was launched in the landmark exhibition, “Four Abstract Classicists,” (1959) organized by the LA County Museum of Art, traveling to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; and, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. At the age of 88, Hammersley’s work was included in the 2007-2009 exhibition, “Birth of the Cool,” organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. His art is in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and, the Butler Institute of American Art, among other fine institutions. 

For more information on the art of Frederick Hammersley:

http://www.amy-nyc.com/artists/frederick-hammersley/
http://www.lalouver.com/html/hammersley

The UNM Art Museum has contributed the loan of its John Chamberlain (American, 1927-2011) foam sculpture from 1966 to the Guggenheim Museum's New York exhibition, John Chamberlain: Choices. A one-time instructor of graduate students at the University of New Mexico (1966), Chamberlain is noted in the canon of American art for his "car crash" sculptures which were a brilliant, three-dimensional response to abstract expressionist painting. Donald Judd once described Chamberlain's color palette (industrially sprayed automobile finishes) as "the hard, sweet, pastel enamels, frequently roses and ceruleans, of Detroit's imitation elegance for the poor." His tireless pursuit of discovery and his intuitive process distinguish him as one of the most important American sculptors of our time.

The Guggenheim's John Chamberlain: Choices (opening February 24, 2012 and traveling to Guggenheim Bilbao) comprises nearly 100 works, from his earliest monochromatic welded iron-rod sculptures to works in foam and the large-scale foil creations of recent years. This presentation encompasses Chamberlain’s shifts in scale, materials, and methods, informed by the assemblage aesthetic that has been central to his artistic practice.

Mr. Chamberlain's works are included in collections of the The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Chicago Art Institute; Dallas Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Nasher Sculpture Collection, Dallas; Menil Museum, Houston; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Tate Gallery, London; and, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, among many other institutions.


For more in formation about the exhibition, please visit
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum