Current Exhibitions
Altoona
A Glorious Tradition
Exhibition in the George A. and Herbert T. Wolf Gallery & the Shirley and Fred A. Pechter Gallery
March 12, 2021 – June 18, 2021
Painting has long been a romantic, nostalgic tradition steeped in the timeless beauty of the medium. It’s been a tool to glorify individuals, visualize myths, and create legends. At its core, traditional painting is an ode to beauty. It is a constant celebration of life’s visual pleasures and peculiarities. From portraits of significant figures to detailed still life paintings, viewers will encounter reality translated through paint. This exhibition, on view from March 12th, 2021 through June 18th, 2021, honors the glorious tradition of painting.
The Implications of the Camera
Exhibition In the Paul I. Detwiler Education Center
December 18, 2020 – May 22, 2021
The Detwiler Gallery will consider replications of photography. 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.
Bedford
Trees: An Appreciation of Nature
Exhibition In the Titelman Galleries and the Paula and Dean Lemley Gallery
April 6, 2021 – July 10, 2021
Come see the various depictions of a ubiquitous part of nature in Trees: An Appreciation of Nature, an exhibition of artworks from the museum’s permanent collection. Everywhere we go, we find an abundance of trees.
In this exhibition, SAMA Bedford is showcasing one of nature’s most abundant resources: trees. From photography to paintings, this exhibition shows how these stoic giants have stirred the appreciation of various artists. Let us put down the devices and surround ourselves with what nature has to offer. The Trees exhibition will inspire us all to appreciate the outdoors a little more.
Looking for that Moment by Robert Bowden
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.
Bodies of Water by Donald M. Robinson
Exhibition In the Donald M. Robinson Gallery
February 6, 2021 – May 1, 2021
Johnstown
Reopening TBD
Ligonier
Looking for the Light in Dark Times
Exhibition In The Elizabeth Shaw Gamble Gallery
April 30, 2021 – July 31, 2021
Jonelle Summerfield is an oil painter from Indiana, PA. She received a degree in Interior Design from The Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2001. She began painting as a hobby shortly thereafter while she worked as a full-time kitchen designer, taking lessons from her mother, Jolene Joyner. Like her mother, she began her artistic career participating in the New Growth Arts Festival and the Indiana County Open Arts Studio Tour in the early 2000s. After taking workshops with other artists she admired, she began to paint full-time in 2012. Aside from her mother, she has taken workshops with Qiang Huang, John Del Monte, Darren Kingsley, Kerry Dunn, and Robert Liberace. Her paintings are impressionistic, and her subjects include interiors, street scenes, animals, and still lifes, among others. European travel is one of her biggest influences, and she travels to obtain her reference photos for each painting. The goal of her work is to depict the good things in life and to provide relief from a chaotic world.
Jolene Joyner of Clymer, PA has had an interest in art since childhood. Though she went to nursing school after graduating from high school and established a forty-year career as a surgical nurse, she resumed her artistic pursuits in her mid-twenties. She has been a member of the Indiana Art Association since the mid-1980s where she met many friends, instructors, and mentors that encouraged her artistic growth. She entered juried exhibits in the region and won many awards while she honed her skills. She later participated in the annual New Growth Arts Festival and the Indiana County Open Arts Studio tour as she gained a following. Notable artists with whom she studied are James Sulkowski, John Del Monte, Darren Kingsley, and Kerry Dunn. Many subjects inspire her, and she is always adding subjects of interest to her repertoire. Favorite subjects include felines, still lifes, scenes from her travels to Europe and beaches of the Caribbean and America's east coast, as well as rural landscapes that include horses and cows.
Back to Woodstock
Exhibition In The Elizabeth Shaw Gamble Gallery
April 30, 2021 – July 31, 2021
1960’s memorabilia and posters from the Collection of Mark Del Costello will most certainly bring back memories. Step back in time and enjoy these authentic music posters from noted artists including Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead. These featured posters represent the original 1969 Woodstock held August 15-18 on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York.
Loretto
Donald M. Robinson Photography Biennial 2021
Exhibition In the Sullivan Gallery
April 16, 2021 - June 25, 2021
Loretto’s Donald M. Robinson Photography Biennial 2021 exhibition will take place from April 16, 2021 through June 25, 2021. The Robinson Biennial is a juried exhibition attracting photographers from across the commonwealth.
The Robinson Photography Biennial Juror is Linda Benedict-Jones. Linda Benedict-Jones is a photographer, writer, and independent curator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2015, she retired from being the first Curator of Photography at Carnegie Museum of Art. She has also served as Executive Director of Silver Eye Center for Photography and Curator of Education at The Frick, both in Pittsburgh. She taught courses in the history of photography at Carnegie Mellon University for 18 years, from 1999 to 2017. Before moving to Pittsburgh in 1993, Benedict-Jones was Curator of The Polaroid Collection and director of Polaroid’s Clarence Kennedy Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Benedict-Jones studied at Minor White’s Creative Photography Laboratory at MIT where she earned a master’s degree in visual studies in 1982.
Cash awards will include a top prize of $2,000 for Best of Show, together with a $1,500 first place award, a $1,000 second place award, and a $500 third place award. The exhibition and events are sponsored by the Donald & Sylvia Robinson Family Foundation.
Through the Lens: Landscapes by Donald M. Robinson
Exhibition in the Margery Wolf-Kuhn Balcony Gallery
April 16, 2021 - June 25, 2021
In 1993, the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art became the repository for the Donald M. Robinson collection of photography and archives. For more than fifty years, Donald M. Robinson has explored landscapes, wildlife, and the human condition. Reflecting on the power of the photographic medium resulting in an enduring source of inspiration for future generations, Robinson also exhibits a mastery of technical complexities. From the dawn of nature’s beauty to the last frontiers on earth, his photographs extend beyond documentation; the collection is a novel of personal experiences and expressions of the universe and all its glory.