Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, aka Alice Walton, made public a couple of acquisitions for the future Bentonville showplace: Kerry James Marshall’s “Our Town” and Mary McCleary’s “The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer.” The pieces, by contemporary artists, are further proof that Walton’s initial idea of concentrating on works made before the 1950s has been cast aside. It was an arbitrary cutoff point anyway, arrived at, Walton advisor John Wilmerding once suggested, because collecting the great big expensive canvasses of the late 20th century didn’t seem practical. Walton is getting different advice now, maybe. At any rate, the later works she’s been announcing, with the exception of sculptural installations on the grounds, aren’t on the large scale of a Frankenthaler or a Noland but are smaller works on paper that will work in galleries of the still underconstruction museum.
“Our Town” (100 inches by 142 inches, unstretched acrylic and printed paper on canvas) was painted in 1995 by Alabama-born African American artist. It shows two African American children painted Dick and Jane reader style, cruising their well-to-do neighborhood, he on a bike, she running alongside. Blue birds carry streamers above the children’s heads a la Cinderella and “Our Town” is painted across the top of the picture. It’s purely cynical of course; the little girl has white thought bubbles coming from her head and the lower left side of the picture has been painted with white graffiti. The expressions on the children’s faces — dull and suspicious — are anything but happy, as if they’re clued in to the unreality.
The painting was bought at auction for $782,000 (including the buyer’s premium) at Christie’s “Post War and Contemporary Evening Sale” last May. It was the same auction at which a Richard Diebenkorn (“Ocean Park No. 117) went for $6.5 million. At only 45 inches by 45 inches, it would fit nicely on the walls of CBMA — just have to wait and see on that one.
McCleary’s work (39 and a half inches by 50 and three-fourth inches) is a work on paper, also a collage, the burning house depicted in wire, twigs and glitter. You will, of course, recognize the title as being from William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” (“Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer”). It appears to have been purchased from Moody Gallery in Houston. The artist is, like Walton, a Texan, a Regent’s Professor Emeritus at Stephen F. Austin State University.
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