Koehnline Museum of Art: Upcoming Exhibitions

image OakArt 2012

April 5 – 27, 2012

Oakton’s art students exhibit their talents in painting, drawing, ceramics, digital art, and photography.

Public Reception: Thursday, April 5, 5 – 8 p.m.

image Steven Jay Urry: A Retrospective

May 10 – July 19, 2012

Steven Urry (1939-1993) had a brilliant, all-too-brief career as an artist, constructing abstract welded steel and aluminum sculptures of biomorphic forms. Born in
Chicago,
He lived and worked around the country in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Miami, and Arizona. Urry began to attract serious attention in1966 during his
 first solo show
of large-scale welded steel sculptures in Chicago. More shows followed at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and in New York galleries, but Urry
couldn’t keep up the pace:
his last important exhibition took place in 1977. Although he continued to create art for the rest of his life, very little of it was shown. Today,
Urry is known and respected by the older
generation of artists, but his work is rarely seen - and no show of his entire career has ever been mounted. Steven Jay Urry:
A Retrospective presents his work - sculptures, drawings,
paintings, and experimental pieces - in the context of his time.

Public Reception: Thursday, May 10, 5 - 8 p.m.

image Eyewitness: Works by Morris Topchevsky

August 2 – September 21, 2012

Morris Topchevsky’s (1899-1947) works provide a personal perspective on a complex historical period in Chicago. As a young immigrant on the city’s Near West Side,
he became sensitized to the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Inspired by social reformer Jane Addams, Topchevsky served as resident art instructor at Addams’
Hull-House settlement, and in later years at the Abraham Lincoln Center on Chicago’s South Side.  During his travels to Mexico, Topchevsky witnessed the revolutionary
development of public art. Upon returning to Chicago, he enthusiastically promoted radical images of life during the Great Depression, while simultaneously portraying
Mexico’s indigenous culture and its distinctive topography. When travel to Mexico becoming increasingly difficult in the late 1930s, Topchevsky found similar aesthetic
inspiration in New Mexico. The last solo exhibition of his work was held in 1948. Sixty years later, Eyewitness: Works of Morris Topchevsky presents a diverse survey
of the artist’s work, illuminating his creative responses to varied geographic and socio-political environments during the first half of the 20th century.

Public Reception: Thursday, August 2, 5 - 8 p.m.

Return to Exhibition