FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 8, 2008 Contact Teta Hilsdon Brattleboro Museum & Art Center Phone: 802-257-0124

Jules Olitski Print Exhibition and Panel Discussion at BMAC

Brattleboro, Vt. — In a panel discussion on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, five people who knew the artist Jules Olitski will discuss “The Preeminence of Jules.” Admission is $4 for adults, $3 for seniors, $2 for students, and free for BMAC members.

The panel discussion accompanies the exhibition “Jules Olitski: An Inside View,” on exhibit at BMAC through November 16. Curated by independent curator and art critic Judith Stein, the show is a major survey of Olitski’s prints from 1954 to 2007. Olitski died in February 2007.

Heading the panel is Andrew Hudson, an artist, art critic and close friend of Olitski’s. He wrote about Olitski’s paintings in news and art publications, and about Olitski’s monotypes for a 2006 exhibit at George Washington University. At Olitski’s memorial, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in March 2007, Hudson spoke about what the artist had meant to him. He calls Olitski an “extraordinary artist and man who threw himself whole-heartedly into painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and writing. Over the course of his lifetime, he repeatedly invented and discovered new ways of creating…In all areas, his art remained always new.”

Also on the panel are master printer Kim Hartman Colligan; longtime Olitski friend and former gallery owner Stephen Long; the artist’s daughter Lauren Olitski Poster; and former BMAC trustee and Olitski student Genie Shields.

Kim Hartman Colligan, of Williamsville, Vt., began helping out in Olitski’s studio on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire when she was 12 years old. Later, after studying art and receiving an MFA in printmaking, she worked with Olitski as his master printer from 2004 to 2007. According to Lauren Olitski Poster, her father loved making prints with Colligan, and took great joy in the work they did together. Stephen Long co-curated a retrospective exhibition and catalogue raisonné of Olitski’s prints at the Associated American Artists gallery in New York in 1989. Later at his own gallery on 57th Street in New York, Long featured annual exhibitions of Olitski’s newest prints.

Lauren Olitski Poster lives in Marlboro, Vt., and has managed her father’s collection of artworks since 1982. As director of the Jules Olitski Warehouse in Jacksonville, Vt., she is the foremost expert on all things Jules Olitski. Genie Shields was a student of Olitski’s in drawing and art history courses at Bennington College during the mid-1960s. After the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center was founded in 1972, she helped organize its first shows, and later served as a museum trustee.

Jules Olitski, born in 1922, was an American abstract painter celebrated for his lyrical Color Field paintings, large-format canvases shimmering with expanses of color. In the mid 1950s he began making prints, smaller works encompassing woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, silkscreens and monotypes.

“Jules Olitski: An Inside View” includes rarely exhibited early prints, among them a suite of small self- portrait etchings, all related but each somewhat different. Late in his life he returned to the self-portrait; the 2004 monotype “Memory” along with its printing plate are included in the exhibit.

A hallmark of Olitski’s creativity is his curiosity and experimentation. Wishing his paintings could look like paint simply sprayed onto air, he began using spray paint to achieve this effect. His prints from the 1960s and early ’70s reflect his Color Field work and pick up this ethereal theme. Over time he adds more and more abstract drawing elements, bold brushstrokes and almost representational forms. Many of his prints from the 1990s on are landscapes and seascapes, still abstract, and still bursting with color and energy.

Olitski studied art from an early age in New York and Paris, and received a master’s degree in art education from New York University. He taught at C. W. Post College on Long Island, and then at Bennington College in Vermont. A prolific artist, he had many solo shows worldwide, and his work is held by major museums in the United States and Europe, including the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, and MoMA in New York City; the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn and American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; and the Tate Gallery in London.

Judith Stein, curator of “Jules Olitski: An Inside View,” is an author and former curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She has been an arts reviewer and essayist for numerous periodicals, including Art in America and Art News, and has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“The Preeminence of Jules” is supported by a gift from Marlboro College. The exhibition “Jules Olitski: An Inside View” was made possible in part by generous gifts from Jan and Rick Cohen, Genie and Jeff Shields, and BMAC trustee Margaret Anne Everitt in memory of Robert Montgomery Scott.

Founded in 1972, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center presents art and ideas in ways that inspire, educate, and engage people of all ages. Each season features 12–15 compelling new exhibits of contemporary artwork by regional and internationally acclaimed artists, as well as 30–35 public programs, such as lectures, artist talks, film screenings, and more.

Museum galleries are open year-round, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Tuesday; please check our website for holiday and other special closings. Regular admission is $4 for adults, $3 for seniors, and $2 for students. Members and children under 6 are admitted free of charge. The Museum Gift Shop is open to the public during regular Museum hours.

The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is located in downtown Brattleboro, in Union Station at the intersection of Main Street (Route 5) and Routes 119 and 142. The Museum is wheelchair accessible. Parking is available in front of the building. Major support for the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center’s 2008–2009 season is provided by Entergy Vermont Yankee, Foard Panel, the Brattleboro Reformer, C&S Wholesale Grocers, Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters and Chittenden Bank. For more information, call 802- 257-0124 or visit www.brattleboromuseum.org.

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