DALLAS – “Alexandre Hogue: The Erosion Series” presents the first exhibition ever devoted to a review of the works that made the artist both famous and infamous during the unfolding of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. The exhibition, on view now through June 15 at the Dallas Museum of Art, features more than 25 works from private collections and public institutions, including that of the DMA, by this member of the so-called “Dallas Nine.”

“Alexandre Hogue: The Erosion Series” is drawn, in part, from the touring exhibition “Alexandre Hogue: An American Visionary—Paintings and Works on Paper,” organized by the Rockwell Museum of Western Art in Corning, N.Y. Additional loans arranged by the DMA will make the Dallas presentation unique, and provide a full account of this important body of work.

“We are delighted to exhibit a selection of works from Alexandre Hogue, whose relationship with the DMA is profound and enduring, with a holding of 35 of the artist’s works in the collection,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “We invite a new generation of viewers to encounter the prophetic vision of this distinguished artist, whose understanding of our natural environment, and mankind’s need to live in concert with the land, inspired this exceptional group of works.”

Hogue’s deep concern for environmental issues spanned the entirety of his career. The land-management failures that spawned the devastation of the Dust Bowl decade of the 1930s were witnessed by Hogue firsthand on his brother-in-law’s ranch near Dalhart, Texas, and became the impetus for some of the artist’s most powerful imagery– the “Erosion” series. Works such as the DMA’s own “Drouth Stricken Area” served as an alarm to the public and an accusation and rebuke to powers that, through encouraging poor farming practices, had helped to produce the greatest ecological disaster in American history.

Born in Missouri in 1898, Hogue moved with his family to Denton, Texas, early in his life. After a year at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and a short stint as an illustrator at the Dallas Morning News, Hogue moved to New York City in the early 1920s to work in advertising and study in the city’s museums. Every summer, Hogue would return to Texas, eventually moving back in 1925 to work with fellow artists.

In the early 1930s, Hogue became one of the original members of the Dallas Nine, a group of painters, printmakers and sculptors active in Dallas who focused on the Southwest landscape as their inspiration. The group, active from the 1930s into the early 1940s, presented their work a number of times at the Dallas Museum of Art, including in “Exhibition of Young Dallas Painters: The Dallas Nine” in 1932 at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and they were the focus of the 1985 exhibition “Lone Star Regionalism: The Dallas Nine and Their Circle, 1928–1945.” Hogue moved to Tulsa, Okla., and was head of the art department at the University of Tulsa from 1945 to 1963; he remained in Tulsa until his death in 1994.

“Alexandre Hogue: The Erosion Series” is included in the museum’s free general admission. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color, illustrated publication by Sue Canterbury with contributions by Susie Kalil and Alexa L. Hayes. Olivia Hogue Mariño, the artist’s daughter, will join Susie Kalil, co-curator of the exhibition, for a conversation about the life and work of Alexandre Hogue on Thursday, Feb. 27. The exhibition will also be a focus of the Art + Science Festival at the DMA on Saturday, April 12. Additional programming, including gallery talks, will be scheduled throughout the run of the exhibition. For further details, visit DMA.org.

“Alexandre Hogue: The Erosion Series” is organized by the Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, New York. The Dallas presentation was organized by Sue Canterbury, the Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art, in collaboration with James Peck and Susie Kalil.

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Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that Daniel Brodsky, the museum’s chairman, and his wife, Estrellita B. Brodsky, an art historian and specialist in Latin American art, have provided a generous gift to endow two curatorships in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

This expansion of curatorial staff provides major support for the department’s broadened programming in both the main building and the Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue that will be vacated by the Whitney Museum in 2015 and subsequently occupied by the Met.

In recognition of their gift, the two new positions will be named the Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art, to be held by a specialist in the art of 20th- and 21st-century Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America; and the Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, including responsibility for the department’s holdings of architecture- and design-related objects and other material. Both will work closely with the modern and contemporary curatorial team on researching and developing the collection and devising the program at the Breuer building, under the leadership of Sheena Wagstaff, the museum’s Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art.

In making the announcement, Campbell said, “Through their generosity and vision, Dan and Estrellita Brodsky have taken a leadership role in our initiative to strengthen the resources and programming for modern and contemporary art. The two new curators will join us at a particularly exciting time, as we lead up to the opening of the Madison Avenue location. Developing our program for the expanded space in which modern and contemporary art will be displayed is a challenge and inspiration for our curators, both within and beyond the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. We look forward to providing the public with a global representation of the art of our time, set within the context of the Met’s unparalleled encyclopedic collection.”

Daniel Brodsky, a real-estate developer based in Manhattan, has been a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum since 2001 and chairman of the Board of Trustees since 2011. He is a longtime supporter of the Met and its programs. His participation began in 1984 when he joined the Museum’s Real Estate Council, which he has chaired since 1996. He has also led since 2011 the Met’s Buildings Committee, which works closely with the museum’s administration to oversee the care, maintenance, and construction activities of the 2.3-million-square-foot building, as well as the complex infrastructure that supports it.

Estrellita Brodsky is a founding member of the Multicultural Audience Development Advisory Committee at the Metropolitan Museum, which seeks to diversify the museum’s cultural content and outreach. She curated the first U.S. retrospective exhibition of the Venezuelan kinetic artist Carlos Cruz-Diez at the Americas Society in 2008; and the exhibition “Jesus Soto: Paris and Beyond, 1950-1970” at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery in 2012. She endowed the Estrellita Brodsky curator for Latin American Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and is a member of MoMA’s Latin American and Caribbean Acquisitions Committee as well as of the board of Tate Americas Foundation. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

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The final bill for the refurbishment of the 17th-century baroque mansion in Paris’s historic Marais quarter now stands at 52 million euros ($71 million), 22 million euros more than the original budget due to changes in the scope of the work.

The museum is scheduled to open to the public again in June, president of the gallery Anne Baldassari told AFP, adding that a more than doubling of the space available would allow curators to really “do justice to the collection.”

Although the museum has around 5,000 paintings drawings, sculptures, ceramics, photographs and documents, previously only a fraction could be displayed at any one time due to the limited space available.

The renovations will boost the exhibition space to 40,000 square feet.

There will also be a corresponding rise in the number of visitors that can be admitted at once from 380 to 650, and annual admission figures are expected to jump from 450,000 to 850,000.

Baldassari said that if all went to plan most of the works would be brought out of storage at the end of April and arranged for display during May. The museum closed in August 2009.

“It’s been a revolution,” she said.

“Everything is new, everything has a fresh coat of paint, everything has been renovated, everything works.”

The museum will in future hold one major exhibition each year. The first in mid 2015 in collaboration with New York’s Museum of Modern Art will take Picasso’s sculpture as its theme.

The Paris museum opened for the first time in 1985 with most of exhibits left to the French state on Picasso’s death in 1973. Others were donated by his family including his widow Jacqueline.

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Kevin and Linda Helmintoller told the Daily News they donated the red 2001 Mallett Hammer Conversion ZO6 Corvette just six weeks ago. They had not even traveled to see it at the museum yet before a sinkhole opened up early Wednesday morning and swallowed their car and seven other classic gems.

The couple visited the museum in Bowling Green on Saturday. Kevin Helmintoller said his car appeared to be underneath the others at the bottom of the hole.

“It definitely hurts, and I’ve cried,” he said. “There’s no question I’m definitely upset, but there’s no way to conceive of anything like this.”

Helmintoller said he discovered Corvettes at 16, when his aunt let him drive hers.

“I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” he said. “From that moment on, I said `I’m going to own one of these.”’

He bought his first Corvette in 1996 and has owned a total of nine. The couple currently is on the waiting list for a Stingray.

Helmintoller said the Mallett Hammer that they donated had been on many racetracks and was so heavily modified that it was a little difficult to drive on the street. Donating it to the museum seemed like a good option.

“They would care about it as much as we do,” Linda Helmintoller said.

Work to repair the Skydome, where the cars were located, was scheduled to begin Monday, museum Executive Director Wendell Strode said. Stabilizing the area so that the cars can be retrieved from the sinkhole could take from five to 10 days. The hole is about 40 feet across and 25 to 30 feet deep.

General Motors Design in Warren, Mich., has said it will manage the painstaking work of repairing the eight prize vehicles.

But Kevin Helmintoller says he isn’t sure there will be much left of his beloved Corvette if and when they do pull it out.

“It appears ours is by far the lowest” in the sinkhole, Helmintoller said. “There’s no sign of it.”

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Information from: Daily News, http://www.bgdailynews.com

Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-02-16-14 2146GMT

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The president of the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart says the museum’s debt has been reduced from $5.5 million to about $2.5 million.

Museum president Darryl Searer tells The Elkhart Truth that its financial health is “excellent.”

Searer credits the turnaround to steps such as cutting the museum’s staff from five employees to three and increased revenue from rentals of its events center.

The 71-year-old Searer agreed in March 2012 to lead the museum for two years, but has decided to stay on for two more years with the goal of making it debt-free by 2020.

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Information from: The Elkhart Truth, http://www.elkharttruth.com

Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-02-17-14 1326GMT

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