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The Springfield Art Museum’s permanent collection contains over 10,000 objects in nearly all media. The works selected for this exhibition were chosen for their ability to reveal the ways in which artists respond to and reveal our cultural identity as Americans. There is no singular or fixed American identity. American art and history is shaped by multiple perspectives, stories, and experiences, and as such, this exhibition aims to present a multiplicity of views within the wider context of historical moments. The exhibition includes 75 works from as wide an array of artistic voices as possible within our current collection, including even more works by women, people of color, Native Americans, and LGBTQ+ communities. This exhibit includes major work by George Caleb Bingham, Asher B. Durand, Jackson Pollock, Wayne Thiebaud, and Alison Saar, among many others.

Frieda Logan was an active local Springfield artist. She attended Springfield Senior High (now Central High School) where she took art classes from Roberta Stoneman Baker, who she cited as a lifelong influence on her artistic career. Upon graduation, Logan received a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute where she completed a fine arts degree. She went on to a successful freelance career in Kansas City creating commercial illustrations for Macy’s Department Store, among other businesses. In 1984, Logan and her husband retired to Springfield where she continued to paint and was active in Springfield’s local art community. This focus exhibition includes paintings in both acrylic and watercolor, gifted to the Museum in 2004 by Logan, featuring heartfelt renderings of daily life in the American Midwest during the 1980s.

What sparks a connection between you and a work of art? Is it color? Is it form? Is it story? What moves you to look longer? This exhibition began with these questions, and more specifically, directing these questions towards the Museum’s collection of over 10,000 objects. To seek answers to these questions, our curator invited three local artists in different disciplines – musician Jin J X, poet Kate Murr, and dancer Sarah Wilcoxon - to tour the Museum’s vaults and look at art together. Each artist has selected a group of objects from the collection and their selections are exhibited alongside new work each artist has created in their own medium in response to, and inspired by, the collection objects. This exhibition is the second in a series that seeks to connect disparate works in the Museum’s collection with a wide range of community members, facilitated and organized by our Curator of Art, Sarah Buhr.

American Lyrical Abstraction developed as an art movement in the 1960s and 70s led by a group of artists including Dan Christensen, Larry Poons, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Natkin, and Sam Francis. These artists sought to expand the idea of abstract painting and to reassert the importance of the formal elements of line and color. Their work was created, in part, in reaction to the streamlined aesthetics, coolness, and political implications of Minimalist and Conceptual Art. Dubbed “lyrical abstractionists,” these artists made work characterized by loose gestural brushstrokes, acrylic staining, an emphasis on rich color, monumental scale, occasional imagery, and a return to a physical and direct sensory experience of painting. This focus exhibition features work by lyrical abstract artists in the Museum’s permanent collection including Poons, Natkin, Francis, Marlene Mueller, and Jules Olitski, among others.

Rodney Frew, a longtime local artist and art educator, developed a reputation for not only his talent as a printmaker, but his “penchant for depicting the human condition in a no-holds-barred manner.” His focused attention on the absurdities of life were informed by humor and sarcasm. Frew taught printmaking, drawing, and painting at Missouri State University for 34 years, retiring with emeritus status in 1997. He exhibited his work often at the Springfield Art Museum, as well as national and international venues. This exhibition features a broad range of Frew’s work pulled from the Museum’s permanent collection - thanks in large part to a generous gift from the artist’s estate, facilitated by his son Morgan Frew, in 2019.