Magical and Real: Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd, Part 3

On Friday, we officially opened Magical and Real: Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd to the public, and the response has been wonderfully positive. We had over 300 people attend the opening, and had a good turnout for Saturday's lecture from co-curator Kirsten M. Jensen. We've even had several people ask us to sign copies of the catalogue, a request that has me feeling a bit like a celebrity. In short, after working on this project for so long, it's very gratifying to see it up and to have visitors enjoying it so much, and I can't think of a better way to wrap up my time here.

Last week, I went into the details about installing an exhibition like this, from unpacking the crates to cleaning smudged walls. Today, we'll conclude our look at this retrospective by taking a virtual tour of the exhibition as it appears in Roswell. There are 100 works spread out over four galleries, so make yourself comfortable.

As I mentioned in last week's post, my primary challenge with the layout was maintaining the spirit of the narrative Kirsten had established while respecting the strengths of our own gallery spaces. The Michener's layout was more or less linear, but with our galleries being more spread out and open-ended, we just couldn't set it up in the same way. Ultimately, however, the differences in layout underscored the strength of the works themselves, because they could still tell a coherent narrative even as they were hung in different combinations.

Let's take a look gallery by gallery:

Spring River Gallery is dedicated to family portraits. This space is the primary corridor that visitors use to access the auditorium and classrooms, so it experiences a high amount of traffic. I thought this was a good place then, to introduce the extended Wyeth family and their relations to Peter and Henriette, since so many people would be seeing them. There's also a large family tree decal in here to help differentiate the various relationships, as it can get a little confusing if you're not already familiar with the Wyeths.

The biggest challenge with this space was figuring out what to do with Portrait of My Father and Henriette's self-portrait from 1937. In the Doylestown installation, they were part of a trio, with Henriette's gorgeous 1936 portrait of Peter being the third work. Kirsten had put Henriette in the middle with N.C. and Peter on either side to illustrate the tension that they all (and especially Henriette) experienced as they debated moving to New Mexico or staying in Pennsylvania. The self-portrait in particular has a strong bittersweet quality. She's holding a bouquet of Pennsylvania flowers away from her face, as though it's too painful to smell them.

The introductory wall in Doylestown.

It was a great introductory wall that elegantly encapsulated several themes of the exhibition, but I knew I wouldn't be able to replicate it here, primarily because Peter's portrait was not traveling with the show. Several works did not travel here, and vice-versa, due to conservation issues or private collectors or museums not wanting their works gone for that long. We also didn't have a movable wall that was large enough to take both works on one side, and even if we did, we have to keep that hallway open in Spring River to accommodate the dais used for City Council meetings in the auditorium. 

My solution, then, was to take one of our movable walls and turn it sideways, keeping the doorways clear. Portrait of My Father would look out toward Mrs. N.C. Wyeth and other family members, while Henriette would look out toward a portrait of an Peter Hurd, painted in 1972. Whereas in the 1937 self-portrait Henriette is contemplating moving full-time to New Mexico, the future she's looking at in 1972 was painted long after she had made the decision and relocated.

This collapsing of time is something I did throughout the exhibition, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. One of my favorite moments was an accidental one. When I hung the 1937 portrait here, I was primarily thinking of its dialogue with Peter Hurd, but when I stepped back, I saw this conversation on the wall behind her:

The painting on the left is an Impressionistic-type scene of Henriette playing in an orchard, painted by N.C. around 1909. The painting on the right is a painting of Henriette as a teenager, also painted by N.C., this time in 1922. In the center is Henriette's self-portrait, painted at a moment when she's debating leaving her childhood home.

Although I wasn't thinking about it at the time, in retrospect, I think I was subconsciously channeling a scene from one of my favorite holiday movies, the 1984 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, directed by Clive Donner and starring George C. Scott as Ebeneezer Scrooge. Aside from being a faithful adaptation of Dickens's work with some terrific performances, the movie has wonderful cinematography. While he's visiting his childhood with the Ghost of Christmas Past, for instance, Scrooge watches his younger self interacting with his father during a tense reunion. After they get into the carriage, Scrooge peers inside, and you get this striking image:

Image courtesy of http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2011/december2011/a-christmas-carol-dvd-review.html

Here's Scrooge of the present looking at both his younger self and his father, and perhaps realizing how much like his father he has actually become. I just love this collapse of time here, because it visually demonstrates how our memories do exactly that. Corporeally we may exist in the present, but our minds are time travelers, jumping back and forth between the future and the past. Like the Roswell Museum's galleries, our memories are not a linear corridor, but a labyrinthine complex, with unexpected twists and turns leading to new connections. 

Entry Gallery looks at the early careers of both Wyeth and Hurd. I used movable walls here to divide the gallery in half. One side is dedicated to Henriette, the other side to Peter.

Wyeth here...

....and Hurd here

Although the gallery is essentially split in half, the works of Hurd and Wyeth aren't exactly separated. Looking down this hallway, for example, you can see Hurd's early canvas Pennsylvania Landscape at the end.

An unintentionally funny moment happened here. These portraits of Pennsylvania farmers by Hurd and his relatives are looking out toward some of Henriette's high-society women.

For Hurd's half of the gallery, I used color to demarcate the distinction between his Pennsylvania work and his New Mexico pieces. I had originally placed the Pennsylvania works here in my early layouts, but switched them because I wanted to emphasize what Hurd was doing in Roswell during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Since the Southwest is where he found his artistic voice, I wanted to highlight these important early works on the rich, dark blue we had selected for the show. 

Our biggest gallery, PGA, was reserved for the biggest paintings. Again I split the gallery in half, with Hurd on one side and Wyeth on the other, using the big wall in the middle as a divider. Aside from dividing the gallery, however, I also used this gallery to explore the multifaceted nature of their careers.

Along the perimeter of the gallery, I hung southwestern works, the pieces our visitors know and love. 

On that big dividing wall, however, I hung works that our visitors are less familiar with, such as Hurd's illustration work or Henriette's fantasies. The wall itself is comprised of several perpendicular parts, so I used this to explore different time periods or themes. 

For Henriette, I wanted to emphasize the different moods her fantasies conveyed. As Kirsten argues, these pieces aren't as sweet as they initially appear, but are much more ambivalent, reflecting the spectrum of human emotions. I also liked having the fantasies located in close proximity with her later southwestern pieces, because visitors are able to see how certain themes in color, asymmetry, and mood run throughout her oeuvre. The magical themes in her fantasies are still subtly visible in her later still lives and portraits.

For Hurd, I explored his illustration career over time. One angle of walls shows the similarity between his work and N.C. Wyeth's, while another grouping shows Hurd's later work after he has come into his own as an artist. 

The final gallery, Founders, served a couple of purposes. From a very practical perspective, this was my spillover space. Since our galleries are a little smaller than the Michener's, not everything could fit in the other three spaces. When an arrangement became too tight, I would take a permanent collection work out of it and move it in here. Keeping it to our collection also means that this gallery will not need to be deinstalled when the rest of the show comes down, since this gallery is normally dedicated to the work of Hurd and Wyeth anyway. When it comes time to deinstall, the prep crew will only have to deal with three galleries instead of four. 

Beyond practicalities, however, I used Founders as an opportunity to talk about Hurd and Wyeth's ongoing significance to the Roswell Museum, as they've always been an important part of our history and identity. A joint show of their work was on view during on official inauguration in 1937, for instance, and Hurd in particular used to come down here to participate in fundraisers and other activities. Our permanent collection got going in earnest when the Winstons and Marshalls, partners in the petroleum industry, started donating works by Hurd and Wyeth anonymously in the late 1940s. Since that time, the work of Hurd and Wyeth has always been on view in one of our galleries.

Our Hurd collection in Founders Gallery, ca. late 1950s

Today, our Hurd and Wyeth holdings remain the largest public repository of their work (our collection alone comprises a quarter of the Magical and Real checklist on view here), and is a perennial favorite among our visitors. I've lost count of the number of times I've had people asking to see The Gate and Beyond, not to mention all the wonderful personal anecdotes that local residents have shared with me about their encounters with Hurd and Wyeth. In short, these two artists have always been important to who we are as a museum, and I wanted to tell that story in this space.

The biggest different between my layout and the one at the Michener Art Museum is that the works of Hurd and Wyeth aren't entirely separated. In Doylestown, it was in some ways like walking through two exhibitions, allowing each artist to have her own distinct voice. Our galleries, however, with their open format and multiple entry points, simply didn't lend themselves to narrative. As a result, they're much more intertwined. You may be looking at a wall of Henriette, but you'll glimpse Peter across the the other end of the room, and vice versa.

Yet I don't see this as a drawback. Rather, it's more reflective of their interaction with one another's work. They had separate studio practices to be sure, but they critiqued one another's works, used the same models, and relied on one another for finding clients and patrons. Their work is distinct, but they did influence each other, and both took inspiration from their surroundings.

I also think it encapsulates their ongoing interaction with the Southwest. Back East, neither artist is especially well known today beyond the specialists who focus on this time period, but here in southeast New Mexico, they're beloved. Hurd and Wyeth pop up everywhere here, whether it's when you find a sketch hanging in someone's house, a personal anecdote exchanged over a book signing, or in the style of a contemporary landscapist. When you're in southeast New Mexico, the art of Hurd and Wyeth is never that far away.

Curating this show has been a journey, and I've learned a lot about both these artists and myself along the way. Knowing how cherished Hurd and Wyeth are out here, I can't think of a better way to thank the Roswell Museum for all the opportunities I've had here. This collection can be a very rewarding one to work with if you're willing to put in the time and effort, and I know that my career is much stronger for having been here.

Magical and Real is open through September 16, so if you have time to visit, please do. The curatorial team put a lot of effort into this show, and there are plenty of beautiful works to see.