ODU's Gordon Galleries Acquire New Art for Collection
Old Dominion University's Baron and Ellin Gordon Galleries announce the acquisition of works from three artists: Margot Blank, Charles Kenneth Sibley and alumna Patti Kanner Myers. The new acquisitions are on display through Jan. 10.
Prints by Margot Blank
The largest gift to the ODU art collection in 2009, by Allan Blank, consists of 84 prints by his late wife, Margot Blank, a well-known multimedia artist who lived in Richmond, Va., and who often exhibited in that city and in Hampton Roads. With this gift, both she and her husband, a respected composer, are now featured in the university's music and visual arts collections.
Blank is well known for her multiple-exposure photography and her expressive printmaking. She was an inveterate observer of nature, everyday activity, interior environments and streetscapes, with an affinity for nuance and detail. Blank most often employed multilayered imagery in her work to construct pictorial and dimensional space not visible in the world around us. Of the full collection, 18 works are currently on display. Photographic prints in which she documents the work of the renowned environmental and installation artist, Christo, will be featured in an upcoming exhibition.
Painting by Charles Kenneth Sibley
Charles Kenneth Sibley, who died in 2005, was and remains an important figure in ODU history for the role he played in establishing and developing the university's art department. Also of consequence to the history of modern painting in the region, Sibley was important as a teacher and mentor of young artists who have gone on to have careers and to teach. The Michael Baker Corp. has gifted one of Sibley's large figurative seascapes to the ODU collection.
At his death at 83, Sibley was considered by many as one of the region's most important artists of the last half of the 20th century. Early in his career, his work was exhibited in top museums in New York and Washington, D.C., alongside such artists as Georgia O'Keeffe and Willem de Kooning. His paintings are included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester and the Chrysler Museum of Art.
Painting by Patti Kanner Meyers
Patti Kanner Meyers is a 1969 graduate of ODU's art department and a former student of Sibley, who exhibits her art around the world. Her gift to the university, "The Parisian Tutu," is a work inspired by a ballerina dress she saw in a shop window while studying at the American Academy of Fashion Design in Paris. The painting represents an iconic garment centrally located in the history of 19th-century costume that appears to deconstruct on the canvas as it is subsumed into its dark background.
Admission to the Gordon Galleries, located at 4509 Monarch Way in the University Village, is free. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday.
The galleries will be closed for ODU's winter break from Dec. 21 to Jan. 4. For more information call 683-6271 or visit http://al.odu.edu/art/gallery.