Chautauqua Institution To Host The Writings and Paintings of Charles E. Burchfield

The Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State is pleased to announce a collection of the works and writings of Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967) will be on exhibition for the first time this summer at the Chautauqua Institution. Each year Visual Arts at the Chautauqua Institution (VACI) presents exhibitions from nationally recognized artists in its newly renovated Strohl Art Center, Fowler-Kellogg Art Center and the Melvin Johnson Sculpture Garden. The Writings and Paintings of Charles Burchfield will be on view at the Strohl Art Center Sunday, June 22 – August 19, 2014. Tours of the galleries will be held on Tuesdays at 2 pm.
Throughout his career, Charles E. Burchfield’s moods, ideas and personal critiques were recorded on thousands of pieces of paper, in studies for paintings and in his journals. The Burchfield Penney is home to 10,000 handwritten journal pages. Curated by Tullis Johnson, in this exhibition, Burchfield speaks for himself through these insightful epigrams and developmental sketches with related masterworks from The Center’s collection.

“The Chautauqua Institution is a worldwide gathering place for those who enjoy the life of the mind. Each summer a number of topics are examined and one that runs consistently like a river through the Institution is the practice of writing,” said Anthony Bannon, Ph.D., Burchfield Penney executive director and writer-in-residence at the Institution. “Charles E. Burchfield manifested a process of his creative activity through writing, and he articulates the subjects and themes on his art. It’s a privilege to be selected to show Burchfield’s work and an outstanding opportunity for the Institution to see how Burchfield exemplifies the joys of the creative mind.”

VACI includes the Chautauqua School of Art, the galleries of the Strohl Art Center, the Fowler-Kellogg Art
Center, the Melvin Johnson Sculpture Garden and the visual arts lecture series. Throughout the summer, public programs will take place at the Chautauqua Institution including exhibition talks and tours featuring curator Tullis Johnson, VACI artistic director Don Kimes, executive director Anthony Bannon and Burchfield Penney docents.

"When, after many years of struggle, VACI (Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution) was created through the merger of all of the visual arts programs at Chautauqua (the Chautauqua School of Art, the Visual Arts lecture series, and the independent Chautauqua Art Association Galleries) it was my dream that in addition to its history of creating a fertile environment for contemporary artists of all ages, Chautauqua would now be able to collaborate with other significant institutions in the region in order to present museum quality work.  The completion of the Strohl and Fowler-Kellogg Art Center galleries in recent years has  made this dream a reality.  This collaboration with the Burchfield Penney Art Center advances that vision to a level which not only supports Chautauqua's mission to explore the enrichment of life through a program that promotes excellence and creativity in the appreciation, performance and teaching of the arts, but it also gives us the opportunity to present the work and writing of one of  America's greatest artists, and artist who also spent his entire life in our region," said VACI artistic director Don Kimes. "Curator Tullis Johnson has done an outstanding job pulling together to only the imagery, but also the thoughts of this great American painter. That sense of the entirety of an artist - their work as well as their thoughts, presented raw and un-edited as they appear on in handwritten notes on sheets of sketchbook paper, give viewers a picture of the artist that is especially in keeping with Chautauqua's interest in artistic exploration in depth."

Kimes added "The late New York School artist Mercedes Matter once told me a story about her close friend, the great Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Giacometti was once asked if he were faced with a burning building containing a cat and a Rembrandt, and he could only save one, which would he save?  Without hesitation he replied "The cat, because I am for life". It is that sense of life coming first that rings so profoundly true in the work of Charles Burchfield. That resonance is what has always appealed to me in his work, and it is why I was so thrilled that Tony Bannon, Director of the Burchfield Penney, agreed to work with us at Chautauqua to present this fabulous exhibition. Although it is the first collaboration between our two Western New York cultural centers, I am certain that it will not be the last."

The Writings and Paintings of Charles Burchfield is made possible through the generosity of Gary and Willow Brost and Rita Argen Auerbach.

About the Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. Over the course of nine weeks, more than 150,000 visitors will stay at Chautauqua and participate in programs, classes and community events for all ages—all within the beautiful setting of a historic lakeside village.

Smithsonian magazine named Chautauqua, N.Y., as the No. 1 "Best Small Town to Visit in 2014" in the cover story of its April 2014 issue. The feature, by former New York Times "Frugal Traveler" columnist Susan Spano, cites Chautauqua Institution's mix of lectures, classes, recreational activities and fine, performing and literary arts programs as the basis for the distinction.

The third in an annual series, the "Best Small Towns to Visit" feature this year "singled out communities for particular strengths in history, music, visual arts, learning, food, theater and science." Working with Esri, a geographical information systems company, Smithsonian identified municipalities with fewer than 15,000 residents "where cultural opportunities abound, at least on a per-capita basis."

About the Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State
Founded in 1966 on the campus of SUNY Buffalo State, the Burchfield Penney Art Center is dedicated to the art and vision of renowned American watercolorist Charles E. Burchfield (1893–1967) and the distinguished artists of Western New York. In 2008, the Burchfield Penney expanded from its location in Rockwell Hall to a new $36 million freestanding facility in the heart of Buffalo’s Museum District. Designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, the museum includes more than 84,000 square feet dedicated primarily to galleries, as well as education and program space. It is home to the world’s largest collection of artwork and ephemera by Burchfield, totaling more than 25,000 objects, and a collection of more than 8,000 works by over 850 artists. The Burchfield Penney was the first LEED certified art museum in New York State and was featured by travel editors of the New York Times as one of the “44 Places to Go in 2009.” For more information go to, www.burchfieldpenney.org