New Currier Museum of Art Opens
More Painting and Sculpture Exhibits in Manchester N H Art Museum
New gallery space now shows 60% more paintings, sculpture, fine art prints and decorative arts, plus works by Monet, Tiepolo, Matisse, Picasso and White Mountain Artists.
From a long-hidden collection of art glass paperweights to Origins, a newly-commissioned steel structural sculpture by Mark di Suvero, Manchester, New Hampshire’s Currier Museum of Art shows off its treasures in 33,000 square feet of new exhibit space.
Many of the works now shown have emerged from hiding for the first time since the museum acquired them. After years of planning, the $21.4-million additions to the 1926 building opened on March 30, 2008. The museum has long been known for the breadth and depth of its collections, which number more than 11,000 items, but never had enough space to show more than the highlights. The newly enlarged building's 33,000 square feet of new exhibit space has solved part of that problem. The expanded gallery space also allows the Currier to host large touring exhibits for the first time.
New Hampshire Artists
Along with art works from the Currier’s own permanent collections, the work of contemporary New Hampshire artists in various media will have a new showcase. They join an already fine collection of works by Benjamin Champney and other artists who worked in the White Mountains. American Impressionists who worked on the state’s seacoast are also represented: Childe Hassam, William Metcalf and J. Appleton Brown, whose painting View from Celia Thaxter's Veranda, Appledore, Isles of Shoals is part of the permanent collection. Shown along with these are works of 18th- and 19th-century American artists from the Hudson River School, including Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Cole.
European Paintings and American Sculpture
The European collection, spanning from the late Middle Ages through the work of the Impressionists, shows works by Tiepolo, Constable and Monet in a gallery whose centerpiece is the 16th-century tapestry The Visit of the Gypsies. Major collections of decorative arts and sculpture include Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, Frederic Remington and Jacques Lipchitz. A large collection of paperweights is on view for the first time, in a gallery exclusively designed for glass and ceramics.
Works in several media – paintings, prints, drawings, photography and ceramics – by Matisse, Rouault, Picasso and Georgia O’Keefe are shown in five new galleries on the first floor devoted to 20th-century and contemporary art.
The Currier is located at 150 Ash Street, Manchester, NH, (603) 669-6144, www.currier.org. It is open Sunday, Monday and Wednesday through Friday 11 am to 5 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and the first Thursday of each month from 11 am to 8 pm.
