Current Exhibitions
Altoona
The Implications of the Camera
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The newest exhibition at Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art opened on December 18th. This exhibition spans three galleries and dives into the history of photography, contemporary artists experimentations with it, and the influence and success of artwork reproducibility in the late 1900s. With installations, historic photographs, and masterpieces, this exhibition has something for any 1900s art enthusiast.
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Exhibition In the George A. and Herbert T. Wolf Gallery
December 18, 2020 – March 6, 2021
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Pictorialism - The Wolf Gallery will host late 1800s / early 1900s photographs from our permanent collection. Artists such as Alfred Steiglitz, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke White, Edward Curtis, and Edward Steichen. These giants of photography all were, at one time or another, working toward the goals of a popular artistic movement called Pictorialism. When photography was invented, it was considered a tool to capture reality, not an tool for artistic expression. These Pictorialists pushed photography away from documenting reality in a straightforward manner, and instead, they created a movement embracing styles and techniques popularized in painting in their photography.
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Exhibition In the Shirley and Fred A. Pechter Gallery
December 18, 2020 – March 6, 2021
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A New Era - The Pechter Gallery will exhibit contemporary artists who use photography as an element of their artistic practice. Some artists use sculpture, fiber art, 3-D rendering software and installation while also using photographic techniques such as darkroom printing, digital manipulation, and scanning. It's an exploration of the contemporary art world’s loose definitions of photography. In the Pechter Gallery, guests will question the definitions of photography today while also seeing how the ideas from the Pictorialists have blossomed in this new era. Artists include April Friges, Chris McGinnis, Heather Brand, Patty Kennedy-Zafred, Eric D. Charlton, Huang Guaier and Wang Runzhong, Laura Krasnow, Lori Hepner, and Zeshan Ahmed.
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Exhibition In the Paul I. Detwiler Education Center
December 18, 2020 – May 22, 2021
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Replications - The Detwiler Gallery will tie into the other two shows by considering replication. The reproducibility of artwork became fuel for artists such as Josef Albers, Andy Warhol, and Robert Rauschenburg, who all benefitted from fast and accurate methods of printing. This gallery embraces the replication processes by showcasing artworks from the museum's permanent collection from the artists listed above and others.
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Bedford
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Major Works from the Permanent Collection and Old Master Prints
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Exhibition In the Titelman Galleries and the Paula and Dean Lemley Gallery
January 23, 2021 – March 27, 2021
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Major Works from the Permanent Collection and Old Master Prints blend in a beautiful arrangement in the Titelman Galleries. SAMA Bedford is excited to announce that the walls will be adorned with some of the World’s most renowned and sought-after artisans. Artists spanning centuries are brought together in an eclectic mix of the Masters. Superior skill is on display for everyone to appreciate.
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Looking for that Moment by Robert Bowden
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Exhibition In the Ashe Gallery and Regional Galleries
February 6, 2021 – May 1, 2021
Robert Bowden’s exhibition displays a compendium of paintings that reveals his amazing talent. A long fixture in the Pittsburgh arts scene, Bowden is noted for his beautiful works. As a painter of urban subjects, his style is to capture the city-scape with intimacy. Bowden is attracted to a subject’s color, shape, light effect and compositional potential. Bowden’s illustrious career as a graphic designer interwoven with his early interest in abstraction has evolved into a successful evolution of realism using the challenging and unforgiving media of watercolor. Urban landscapes painted en plein air is the major theme in his paintings. He has also written four books and three exhibition catalogs of his work. Bowden has paintings in four museum permanent collections as well as in numerous corporate and private collections.
Robert Bowden graces his canvases with a deft eye for lifelike color and detail. Through the use of watercolors, he paints exactly the world that he sees. Each composition is a tribute to the beauty that surrounds us every moment of every day. His appreciation for these details is evident and his skill communicates it effortlessly onto canvas.
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Bodies of Water by Donald M. Robinson
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Exhibition In the Donald M. Robinson Gallery
February 6, 2021 – May 1, 2021
Johnstown
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Reopening TBD
Ligonier
Artists of the 21st Century: Student Art Exhibition
Exhibition In The Elizabeth Shaw Gamble Gallery
February 12, 2021 – April 18, 2021
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With the return of Artists of the 21st Century, the museum’s twenty-third annual student art exhibition, SAMA will continue its tradition of celebrating the area’s talented young artists. Student artwork will be displayed at Loretto and Ligonier-Valley. This exhibition is sponsored by the Sigma Chapter of Alpha Delta Kappa International Honorary Organization for Women Educators.
Held in conjunction with National Youth Art Month, the exhibition is open to schools that participate in SAMA’s Arts-in-Education or Artist-in-Residence program. Each participating school district is permitted to submit up to 25 individual projects and two group projects. Through the programs, SAMA educators and professional artists travel to public and parochial schools to provide lessons designed to enhance students’ understanding of art creation, technique, history, criticism and aesthetics. SAMA’s award-winning education initiative is the largest of its kind in the Commonwealth.
This project was made possible through the AIE Partnership of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency. State government funding for the arts depends upon an annual appropriation by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The PCA Arts-in-Education Partner in this region is the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art.
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Loretto
Artists of the 21st Century: Student Art Exhibition
Exhibition In the Sullivan Gallery
February 5, 2021 – April 3, 2021
With the return of Artists of the 21st Century, the museum’s twenty-third annual student art exhibition, SAMA will continue its tradition of celebrating the area’s talented young artists. Student artwork will be displayed at Loretto and Ligonier-Valley. This exhibition is sponsored by the Sigma Chapter of Alpha Delta Kappa International Honorary Organization for Women Educators.
Held in conjunction with National Youth Art Month, the exhibition is open to schools that participate in SAMA’s Arts-in-Education or Artist-in-Residence program. Each participating school district is permitted to submit up to 25 individual projects and two group projects. Through the programs, SAMA educators and professional artists travel to public and parochial schools to provide lessons designed to enhance students’ understanding of art creation, technique, history, criticism and aesthetics. SAMA’s award-winning education initiative is the largest of its kind in the Commonwealth.
This project was made possible through the AIE Partnership of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency. State government funding for the arts depends upon an annual appropriation by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The PCA Arts-in-Education Partner in this region is the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art.
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Political Posters from the Mark DelCostello Collection
Exhibition in the Margery Wolf-Kuhn Balcony Gallery
October 16, 2020 - February 12, 2021
The Mark del Costello Collection focuses on the American graphic design of the modern era. Numbering nearly 3,123, it includes posters and ephemera related to a wide variety of topics such as music, theater, film, visual arts, product advertising, and political issues. Although most examples in the collection date to the second half of the twentieth century, there are outstanding earlier works by renowned illustrators Howard Chandler Christy and Norman Rockwell. Apart from its artistic significance, the Mark del Costello Collection is also an important source for social history, touching on many of the noteworthy events and movements that have occurred in the United States over the last fifty years.