Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Unveiling the (now) largest art museum in Maine

Art Finds A Universal Home
Taryn Plumb
 


Colby College Museum of Art
5600 Mayflower Hill Drive
Waterville, Maine
Grand reopening July 13


ELABORATELY CARVED BRONZE TRIPOD STRUCTURES FROM FOURTH CENTURY B.C. CHINA LANDSCAPES BOTH WISPY AND HAZY, LUSCIOUS AND RICH. EERIE MINIMALIST ETCHINGS OF MOROSE WOMEN IN BLACK; CROWDED BALCONIES IN AMSTERDAM. STILL-LIFES; HUNT SCENES; IRREVERENT SCULPTURES; CONTEMPORARY MIXED-MEDIA BRANDISHING ITS MIRROR ON SOCIETY.

This menagerie of work, crossing centuries and context, mediums and meaning, will soon enrich the walls of the expanded Colby College Museum of Art, which is set to open its new 26,000-square-foot Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion on July 13.

With its unveiling, it will become the largest art museum in Maine, composed of five wings, nearly 50,000 square feet of exhibition space, and more than 8,000 works of art. “We want to be a destination for people interested in not just American art, but contemporary art,” said Sharon Corwin, the museum’s Carolyn Muzzy director and chief curator.

The $15 million project was born in 2007, when Peter and Paula Lunder promised to gift their expansive collection of more than 500 pieces to the school; the impressive cache of work was amassed over three decades and represents a wide spectrum of American art in painting, mixed media and sculpture, from the classical and richly-detailed John Singer Sargent, to the abstracted realism of Edward Hopper, to the ethereal, often moody James McNeill Whistler.

 

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