Through September 29, 2024
When I was growing up in Rockland from grammar school to high school, there was no museum. One of the great joys of my life is that we have a first-rate one now—a beautiful building that encloses creative works that can stand with the great ones. That is something that I had not expected in my wildest dreams to find in a town in Maine—that jewel that shines. –Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) wrote these words following an exhibition of her work at the Farnsworth Art Museum in 1985. In the four years preceding the exhibition, Nevelson donated 87 pieces of art to the museum, including 56 of her own works. Her brother, Nathan Berliawsky, and sister, Anita Berliawsky Wienstein, also made significant gifts, making the Farnsworth’s Nevelson collection the second largest holding of the artist’s work after the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
In advance of the Farnsworth Art Museum’s 75th Anniversary in 2023, the exhibition, Louise Nevelson: Dawn to Dusk, traces the artist’s formative years to her emergence as a sculptor of international renown through works selected from the museum’s collection. Included are more than forty works of art by Nevelson, from early paintings, drawings, and figurative sculptures, to later abstract painted wood constructions, collages, and examples of the artist’s unique handcrafted jewelry.