Nancy Weekly is Inspired by US Olympic Triumph in Swimming

As we celebrate the accomplishments of the Americans who won so many Olympic medals in swimming, I am reminded of a wonderful watercolor painting by Grace McKendry titled Poolscape that captures the essence of water’s fluidity and the kinetic energy of a swimmer inhaling between strokes.

Grace McKendry was well known for her sports paintings, as well as portraits of many prominent Buffalonians. An art instructor for thirty years at Nichols School and Nottingham Academy, McKendry was beloved by her students and admired for her energy and camaraderie in the arts community. Born Grace Maher in South Buffalo, she studied at the Albright Art School and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in art education at the State University College at Buffalo (now known Buffalo State College/SUNY). She pursued graduate work at the University of Notre Dame and the University at Buffalo. This mother of seven children also served as president of the Buffalo Society of Artists and was engaged in numerous civic and arts organizations.

Nancy Weekly
Head of Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator

Nancy Weekly is the Head of Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator for the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the world’s only museum dedicated to American watercolor master Charles E. Burchfield and artists of the Buffalo Niagara region. She also serves as an adjunct lecturer in Museum Studies for the Department of History and Social Studies Education at Buffalo State College

Since September 1981, Ms. Weekly has organized exhibitions on an extensive array of subjects including historic and contemporary art, photography, craft art and decorative arts, with a specialization in Western New York artists. She is recognized as the world’s leading expert on Charles E. Burchfield, having organized nationally touring exhibitions of his work with accompanying catalogs, as well as a wide range of publications. She assisted Robert Gober and UCLA’s Hammer Museum staff in developing Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, and contributed an essay on Burchfield’s unusual Conventions for Abstract Thoughts. Her essay, Color and Sound: Charles E. Burchfield and the Question of Synesthesia was published in the exhibition catalog,Sensory Crossovers : Synesthesia in American Art. Her most recent essay, Storyboard: The Sexual Politics of Jackie Felix, appears in the catalog for a retrospective exhibition of Felix’s provocative art that represents topical social issues, such as female identity, popular culture, and sexual politics within the context of feminism and late 20th-early 21st-century art.