The door has become the entrance to the museum’s Martin Wing.

Phillip Lloyd Powell was one of New Hope’s finest craftsmen. “He was one of New Hope’s sparks of creativity,” said Michener Director and CEO Bruce Katsiff, who had been a friend of Powell and remembered him riding his bicycle through New Hope.

Powell created the door for the Craftsman 67 exhibition at the Philadelphia Civic Center and later installed it at hi s New Hope residence on Route 202. Because it was not a commissioned piece, it represented his true spirit, says Curator of Collections Connie Kimmerle. When the building was demolished the door was saved and eventually offered for public auction. The Michener Art Museum acquired Powell’s elaborately carved and painted pine door through a Rago Auction in 2009.

Over a period of six months, furniture conservator Behrooz Salimnejad undertook a cross-sectional microscopic analysis of the door’s paint layers while stabilizing the door and repairing areas that were damaged by insects and moisture. It had been covered over with two coats of latex, but family members recalled the original red and orange colors it has been restored to.

Powell (1919-2008), whose designs blur the line between sculpture and furniture, created work for collectors as varied as Lenox China and writer Paddy Chayefsky. He was inspired by George Nakashima and Wharton Esherick. Sharing studio space with fellow New Hope artisan Paul Evans, Powell began incorporating metal and found objects into his own work.

Powell traveled extensively to Spain, Portugal, England, Sicily and Morocco, where he was inspired by the carvings and decorative elements found in furnishings and architectural elements.

Read the story at Antiques and Fine Art.

George Sotter (1879-1953), Silent Night, ca. 1932, oil on canvas, H. 36 x W. 40 inches, Collection of Louis E. and Carol A. Della Penna.

What could be more romantic this Valentine’s week than taking your sweetie to see Painterly Voice at the Michener Art Museum? Combine it with a drive through beautiful Bucks County, dine at one of Doylestown’s fine restaurants and continue the evening by the crackling fire at an area B&B.

About 10 staffers and volunteers awoke at 3 a.m. to carpool, meeting at WHYY’s facility on North Sixth St. at 5:30 a.m. Lots of callers were from Doylestown, and said they were excited to hear the Michener Art Museum named on air.

After the pledge, we were given a tour of the studios and saw the spaces where Terry Gross, Mike McGrath and Marty Moss-Coane broadcast from. We got to meet with Susan Greenbaum, Senior Producer, Radio Times, who talked about how the program has evolved over the years, bringing in more international authors and guests, and how they meet weekly to discuss story ideas. When Marty signs off from her daily broadcast, we learned, she dives into a ream of reading material to prepare for her next interview. No wonder she’s always so well informed. Marty really listens, Susan told us, while also preparing for the next question.

The Michener Art Museum staff was thrilled to partner with another cultural organization in the Philadelphia region.

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An economic downturn disrupted the American marketplace, and unemployment reached double digits. Urban dwellers retreated to the country, embracing a simple and moral work ethic, and sought a path to a better life by working on farms and making things by hand.

This may sound like the times we are living in today, but similar circumstances in the 1890s led artists to embrace the concept of integrating art into everyday life,  using native craft traditions and indigenous materials to produce decorative objects that were simple in form and functional in design.

The Arts and Crafts and modernist studio craft movements in southeastern Pennsylvania produced a diverse body of work, and makers of contemporary studio craft continue to explore fresh ideas and new designs.  Whether a mosaic tile, an abstract form in wood, a wall sculpture, or a ceramic vessel, these nonverbal forms of human expression not only reflect cultural values but have the power to transform everyday lives.

The creative energy, broad technical repertoire, and innovative designs of these artists are subjects of the Michener Art Museum’s new installation of work by studio craft artists of the Delaware Valley. Intelligent Design, opening February 3, will highlight regional studio craft from its earliest beginnings to the diversity of expression today.

The exhibition features work from the studio shops of such makers and designers as Frederick W. Harer, Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima, Mira Nakashima-Yarnall, Phillip Lloyd Powell, Paul Evans, David Ellsworth, Mark Sfirri, Robert Dodge, Toshiko Takaezu, Robert Winokur, and Matthias Pliessnig.

Over the last century, regional studio craft artists have been creating objects in which the work’s design flows out of its function, its power to elicit emotions and ideas, and its ability to reference a plurality of ideas and styles. Whether crafting for the functional, a sculptural and aesthetic effect, or to explore the possibilities of representation, these artists produced a rich body of work that bears the aesthetic imprint of its time.

Intelligent Design highlights studio craft in the Delaware Valley region from its earliest beginnings to the diversity of expression today.  “The creative energy, broad technical repertoire, and innovative designs of the artists represented here make them highly desirable candidates for the Michener’s permanent collection,” says Curator of Collections Constance Kimmerle.  “The strong studio craft tradition of southeastern Pennsylvania represents a significant collecting opportunity for the Michener Art Museum, and it’s exciting to be doing this in the area in which the museum is actively building its permanent collection.”

The James A. Michener Art Museum is looking ahead to an exciting year, with a touring exhibition in April, Offering of the Angels: Treasures from the Uffizi Gallery.  From Florence, Italy’s famed museum, this exhibit of Renaissance paintings and tapestries will be making its only Northeast stop in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  A few weeks later, the Michener Art Museum will open the Edgar N. Putman Event Pavilion, a glass-enclosed wing that will be home to museum events and programs, such as Jazz Night, as well as for special event rentals. As part of the expansion, the museum will open a dedicated education wing and re-open the Patricia Pfundt Sculpture Garden. And a permanent exhibition, Intelligent Design: Highlights of Arts and Crafts and Studio Craft Movements, will open in February.

A look at the season ahead (images available on request):

Mavis Smith: Hidden Realities

January 14—May 20, 2012

Reception: February 3, 6-7:30 p.m.

The paintings of Mavis Smith—part storyteller, part portraitist, and part stage director – are like single frames of a movie with no beginning and no end, as mysterious figures gaze out at the world with enigmatic calm, surrounded by swimming pools, moody interiors, and distant skies. Often working in the ancient craft of egg tempera, which was used by artists as diverse as Botticelli, Vermeer, and Andrew Wyeth, Smith slowly builds up layer upon layer of translucent color. The resulting images seem to radiate light from within, making the people who inhabit her luminous world both arresting and slightly surreal.

Bucks County resident Mavis Smith studied at the Pratt Institute in the 1970s, and has exhibited her work in Holland and Switzerland as well as Santa Fe, New York City, and at several venues in Bucks County. She is also a prolific illustrator and author of children’s books, having authored 10 and illustrated at least 75. Organized by the Michener Art Museum, this exhibition samples a range of Smith’s work, including both paintings and works on paper as well as figurative images, still lifes, and her most recent images of twisted and convoluted tree branches.

Intelligent Design: Highlights of Arts and Crafts and Studio Craft Movements

Permanent Exhibition opening February 3, 2012

The Arts and Crafts and modernist studio craft movements in southeastern Pennsylvania produced a diverse body of work, and makers of contemporary studio craft continue to explore fresh ideas and new designs.  Whether a mosaic tile, an abstract form in wood, a wall sculpture, or a ceramic vessel, as nonverbal forms of human expression, these works not only reflect cultural values but can function to transform the particulars of our everyday lives.  The creative energy, broad technical repertoire, and innovative designs of these artists are subjects of the Michener Art Museum’s new installation of work by studio craft artists of the Delaware Valley.  

Intelligent Design will highlight regional studio craft from its earliest beginnings to the diversity of expression today.  The exhibition features work from the studio shops of such makers and designers as Frederick Harer, Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima, Mira Nakashima, Phillip Lloyd Powell, Paul Evans, David Ellsworth, Mark Sfirri and Robert Dodge, Toshiko Takaezu, Robert Winokur, and Matthias Pliessnig.

Have Gags, Will Travel: The Life and Times of a New York Cartoonist

March 10—July 1, 2012

From The New Yorker to Boys’ Life, from lurid detective magazines to church quarterlies, the “gag” has become such a staple of American life that we rarely notice the skills that go into making them. Sylvia Getsler (1926-2009) was a rarity in the cartooning world—a highly successful female gag artist whose work was published in the Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, True Detective, McCall’s, and Ladies Home Journal. Born in Poland, she emigrated to New York in 1933, and by her early twenties had begun what became a regular Wednesday ritual: traveling around New York City with portfolio in hand, visiting the cartoon editors of various “syndicates” that controlled what got printed in numerous magazines. As a freelancer, she had to sell her gags to survive, and what often sold was a world in which every man was a skirt-chaser and an alcoholic, and every woman’s mission in life was to shop and get married. Getsler made hundreds of these gags that were published around the world, but her heart was in the wit and innocence of children. This exhibit focuses on her beautifully drawn gags of kids—kids who want to understand grown-ups but maybe never be one, kids who are wise beyond their years but constantly befuddled by the strange rituals of adulthood.  Getsler’s insights into the world of children remain as timeless and relevant today as the day they were drawn.       

Offering of the Angels: Treasures from the Uffizi Gallery

April 21 – August 10, 2012 

The work of major Renaissance artists will travel to the Michener Art Museum in the exhibition, Offering of the Angels: Treasures from the Uffizi Gallery, on view from April 21 through August 10, 2012 in the Museum’s Paton|‌‌‌Smith|Della Penna-Fernberger Galleries. Drawn from the holdings of the incomparable Uffizi Gallery in Florence and curated by its Director, Antonio Natali, the exhibition will feature examples of art created between the 15^th and 17^th centuries. Oil paintings by legendary artists such as Botticelli, Titian, Tintoretto, Parmigianino, Cristofano, and their contemporaries will be on display along with two tapestries from the same period. Forty-five master works will depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Organized by Amici degli Uffizi of Florence, Italy, the traveling exhibition’s only Northeast stop will be at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

To Stir, Inform, and Inflame: The Art of Tony Auth

June 2—September 23, 2012

Tony Auth’s cartoons, seemingly simple and always direct, have influenced public opinion and politicians for more than forty years. “Our job is not to amuse our readers,” says Auth of a national artistic heritage of editorial cartooning that began with Benjamin Franklin in 1754. “Our mission is to stir them, inform and inflame them.” Auth was a fledgling artist from California in 1971 when The Philadelphia Inquirer flew him in for a weeklong job interview as the paper’s editorial cartoonist, and thus began a Pulitzer Prize-winning legacy of excellence that documents the changing political and cultural landscape of our time. This retrospective exhibition gathers together the full range of Auth’s art, including drawings, paintings, sketches, and newspaper pages, as well as a selection of his award-winning children’s book illustrations. From Nixon to Obama, from the energy crisis to the financial crisis, this exhibit will display more than 100 original cartoons that touched the lives of countless newspaper readers in our region and, through syndication, all over America.

And continuing…

The Painterly Voice: Bucks County’s Fertile Ground

Continues through April 1, 2012

Learning to See: Photographs by Nancy Hellebrand

Continues through February 26, 2012

The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. Museum hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm;
Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. For more information, visit www.michenerartmuseum.org or call 215-340-9800.

“Having a permanent education space will mean we can expand programming for children ages 3 to 15 and be able to work more with adult groups and senior citizens in studio art classes,” says Director of Youth and Family Programs Ruth Anderson. “We also hope to expand our Learning to Look and Listen preschool art education program and host outreach programming on a more regular basis.”

Permanent classroom space will make it possible to expand current course offerings; enable greater flexibility for youth and family programs and school tour programs; broaden the range of art materials students can use; and inspire ongoing collaboration between age groups.

“The beauty of art studio classes and summer camp at the Michener Art Museum is that students engage in a variety of art-making experiences with an ongoing exposure to the museum’s permanent and special exhibitions,” continues Anderson. “We provide a unique opportunity for students to be inspired not only by excellent adjunct staff members but also the works of some of Bucks County’s greatest artists.”

“This is part of the museum’s recognition of how our education program has grown,” says Michener Art Museum Director/CEO Bruce Katsiff. “We never before had dedicated studio space and a permanent children’s gallery.”

Visitors to the new education space will enter first through the dedicated children’s gallery into the three classrooms.

“We will be able to exhibit children’s art 12 months a year with formal invitational exhibitions, and in more spontaneous ways,” says Susan Sherman, director of the children’s gallery. “The children and our museum visitors will have better access to the children’s exhibits, and the gallery will be much more integrated into the fabric of the educational offerings at the Michener.  We are all pretty excited to see this happen.”

Education programs previously shared space with other programs and events in the Silverman Pavilion. The museum expects to open its brand-new Edgar N. Putman Event Pavilion in spring 2012. This $5 million high profile project – the largest self-supporting glass structure in the northeast, designed by KieranTimberlake of Philadelphia – will now be used for Jazz Nights, exhibition programming and other special events.

The museum has come a long way since its beginnings in the old Bucks County Jailhouse in 1988. “Back then, the Silverman was the whole museum,” says Katsiff. Katsiff, who joined the museum in 1989, has announced his retirement, effective spring 2012 after the completion of the Event Pavilion, the new education wing and the opening of a traveling exhibit of Renaissance paintings and tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy – sometimes referred to as “the Louvre of Italy” — Offering of the Angels.

Happ Contractors of Doylestown expects to complete the renovations to the Silverman Pavilion by April 15. Ellen Happ is architect. Two of the classrooms will be named for Carol and Louis Della Penna and Eugene W. and Marie Louise Jackson. Naming opportunities still exist. If interested, please contact Candace Clarke at 215.340.9800 ext. 128.

The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. Museum hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm;
Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. Admission: Members and children under 6, free; adults $12.50; seniors $11.50; college student with valid ID $9.50; ages 6-18 $6; under 6 free. For more information, visit www.michenerartmuseum.org or call 215-340-9800.

You’re strolling down a busy sidewalk, absorbed in your thoughts. Suddenly someone walking the other way glances in your direction, you glance back, and your reverie is broken. Two souls meet, briefly, then the moment passes, and without breaking stride you each walk on.

The paintings of Mavis Smith are about that moment, hinting at a narrative, yet remaining intentionally elusive. Mavis Smith: Hidden Realities will be on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum January 14 to May 20, 2012 in the Fred Beans Gallery.

Part storyteller, part portraitist and part stage director; the Bucks County resident and Trenton native creates images like single frames of a movie with no beginning and no end. Who are these mysterious figures, gazing at the world with enigmatic calm, surrounded by swimming pools, moody interiors and distant skies, portals to another world?

Smith, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Pratt Institute in 1977, says they are not of any specific place. “I am trying to create an atmosphere from my mind,” she says. Her fantasy environment is gleaned from travel, film, music and books. A career as a children’s book illustrator left her with a well-oiled imagination.

“I don’t start with a firm concept,” says Smith. “Your mind is open and you go into a trance and the ideas come in. I start out with a face or pose that intrigues me; then once I am caught up in the physical execution of the piece, other elements of the composition suggest themselves. The background elements usually evolve after I start painting.”  

The faces of her subjects are porcelain-smooth, the eyes almond shaped. “I think what gives them that Botticelli quality is the medium,” says Smith, who studied egg tempera at the Seattle Academy of Fine Art in 2002. Egg tempera was used by artists as diverse as Botticelli, Vermeer and Andrew Wyeth.The resulting images seem to radiate light from within, making the people who inhabit her luminous world slightly surreal.  ”I’ve always been fascinated by the technique, having seen it at the Metropolitan Museum and at the Uffizi (in Florence).”

Egg tempera involves a process of building up hundreds of translucent layers. More durable than oil, egg tempera is made from powdered pigment and egg yolk mixed up fresh daily. It dries quickly, so 50 to 100 layers can be added in a day. “Each layer is pure color, and every layer affects the one beneath,” says Smith.

“Instead of an exhibition in a museum, think of this show as an archeological dig,” says the Michener’s Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chief Curator Brian Peterson. “As you slowly peel back the layers of earth, you start to uncover an arrowhead here, a shard of pottery there.  You ask yourself, ‘Who were these people?’ The deeper you dig, the more the clues pile up, and finally what was hidden seems within reach—until another layer of earth comes into view.”

Smith has exhibited her work in Holland and Switzerland as well as Santa Fe, New York City, and at several venues in Bucks County. She has written 10 children’s books and illustrated more than 75.

Organized by the Michener Art Museum, Mavis Smith: Hidden Realities samples a range of Smith’s work, including both paintings and works on paper as well as figurative images, still lifes, and her most recent images of twisted and convoluted tree branches.

Mavis Smith will present a gallery talk Sunday, January 22, 3 pm. On Thursday, May 17, 7 pm, she will present a lecture and demonstration, Egg Tempera: Then and Now. Registration required: 215-340-9800.

The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. Museum hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm;
Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. Admission: Members and children under 6, free; adults $12.50; seniors $11.50; college student with valid ID $9.50; ages 6-18 $6; under 6 free. For more information, visit www.michenerartmuseum.org or call 215-340-9800.

The holidays are all about giving, and that’s the focus of the Gift of Giving X in the Children’s Gallery at the James A. Michener Art Museum November 13 through December 4. This annual celebration presents a selection of two-dimensional work created by students from Newtown Friends and Pen Ryn schools.  After the exhibition, work will be gift wrapped and distributed to area residents affected by HIV/AIDS. Opening reception: November 13, 2 to 4 pm, with refreshments, entertainment and art activities.

Prefer to make the gifts you give? You can with the Michener’s Holiday Gift-Making Workshop December 3, 1 to 3 pm. Fee: $20 members/ $25 non-members. Every person will create a hand-made gift, have the opportunity to wrap it and create an original greeting card before they bring it home. Suitable for all ages.

You’ve made your list, you’ve checked it twice, so treat your family to something nice: a wonderful evening of holiday festivities at the Michener Art Museum’s annual Holiday Open House December 13, 7 to 9 pm. Area performing artists will present entertainment inspired by the season. Family fun includes games, discovery boxes, books and art-inspired activities in the Family Education Center.

Give the Gift of Art! If you know a child who loves art, consider a Michener Art Museum Gift Certificate, available for classes and workshops that run throughout the year as well as summer camp. Contact randerson@michenerartmuseum.org for details.

And what better place to do your holiday shopping than in the Museum Shop! Find everything from cards to jewelry, great books about art, and clothing and accessories with a flair. Become a member and save 10 percent on everything you buy.

So let your days be merry and bright with holiday happenings at the Michener!

The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. Museum hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm;
Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. Admission: Members and children under 6, free; adults $12.50; seniors $11.50; college student with valid ID $9.50; ages 6-18 $6; under 6 free. For more information, visit www.michenerartmuseum.org or call 215-340-9800.

It’s Latin Jazz Night at the Michener Art Museum.

Pianist, singer, arranger and composer Suzzette Ortiz will perform Latin jazz standards as well as original music from a soon-to-be-released album when Latin Jazz Night comes to the Michener Art Museum Saturday, November 19. Joining her will be William Morales (bass), William Murray (saxophone), Augusto Febres (congas), and Cuban sensation Angel “Cuco” Castellanos (Cajon and percussion).

Ortiz has played in such venues as the Kimmel Center, the Mann Music Center, Zanzibar Blue Jazz Club, Villanova Performing Arts Center, La Feria del Barrio, the Bethlehem P.R. Festival, the Wayne Jazz Festival, the Chicken Bone Beach Jazz Festival in Atlantic City, and El Flamingo Night Club in Manhattan.

Originally from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, she studied piano with Cesar “Pupi” Pedroso of the world-famous Cuban group, Los Van Van, Orlando Fiol, Philadelphia jazz phenomenon Jimmy Amadie, and has shared the stage with such artists as Tito Puente, Nestor Torres, Eddie Palmieri, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Compay Segundo of the Cuban-based Buena Vista Social Club, Brenda K. Starr, and Hilton Ruiz. Her international performance credits include the International FestiJazz of La Paz, Bolivia, Venezuela, and the Jazz Festival in Cuba.

In summer 2007 Ortiz returned from a concert tour in Tuscany, Italy, with the Christina Cultural Art Center singing ensemble Fruits of the Spirit. Ortiz was hired by the center as an artist-in-residence to conduct the new ensemble. She works with Dennis Fortune, a renowned jazz piano player, arranger, and composer, who also is the assistant director for Fruits of the Spirit. Fortune and Ortiz, along with Fruits of the Spirit, have opened for the Grammy award-winning vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware.

Having received numerous awards, commendations, and medals from Camden City Council, Camden Board of Education, the New Jersey State Senate, V.S.A. (an organization that promotes music for special education students), Arts of New Jersey, and even Camden’s mayor, her greatest reward, she says, is “spreading her passion for music to her students, along with teaching them the value of making a difference.”

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in piano performance with a minor in music composition from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico and a Master’s degree in Music Education from Temple University in Philadelphia. She has studied choral conducting at Juilliard School of Music and the University of the Arts.  

Ortiz is the choral director for the award-winning concert choir from the Creative Arts Morgan Village Academy (Creative Arts High School) in Camden, New Jersey.

In 2005, she and her students climbed to another level of musical accomplishment by winning the Gold Award at the Heritage Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In February 2006, Ortiz completed a tour to Ghana, West Africa, where she performed in various venues with her school’s concert choir and five dancers.

Of special note is that in May 2007, Walmart, along with members of the Camden community, named Ortiz “Teacher of the Year” and gave the school $1,000 toward her next trip with the school’s concert choir. The Camden mayor proclaimed October 12, 2007 “Suzzette Ortiz Day.” Walmart presented her school with a $10,000 grant from its foundation.

“Jazz Night has been a signature live music event at the Michener for 15 years now. Our aim is to bring a diverse performance schedule featuring exceptionally  talented musicians from throughout the Philadelphia region and beyond. We are thrilled to present Suzzette Ortiz and Friends at our upcoming Jazz Night.”

The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. Museum hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm;
Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. Admission: Members and children under 6, free; adults $12.50; seniors $11.50; college student with valid ID $9.50; ages 6-18 $6; under 6 free. For more information, visit www.michenerartmuseum.org or call 215-340-9800.