Emma Kelsey – Staff Writer

This week, two concurrent, unique art exhibits opened at the Hillstrom Museum of Art here on campus. The works will be on display from Feb 13 through Apr 23. One is called Improvised Structures: Recent Sculptural Works by Nicolas Darcourt, and the other: Elizabeth Catlett in the Hillstrom Museum of Art.
Nicolas Darcourt is a faculty member here at Gustavus, having taught ceramics in the Art and Art History Department since 2012, and serving as the studio and visual arts programs manager for the department. In the brochure for his exhibit, readers can learn more about Darcourt’s unique background and discovery of his love for art, specifically clay and ceramics.
“Darcourt’s ceramic works use press-molded objects and hand-built shapes to focus on a mix of architectural ornament, exposed layers of earth, engineered forms, monument, and manufactured byproduct. These coalesce into accumulations that express abstract notions of the confluence of memory, geography, and society,” the publicity statement for this exhibit says.
The Improvised Structures works are all from 2020 or later and include wall reliefs, three-dimensional tableaux, and garniture sets, all on display. Most of the works are also available for purchase, directly from the artist.
The Elizabeth Catlett in the Hillstrom Museum of Art exhibit considers the African American artist Catlett (1915-2012) through the works recently acquired by the Hillstrom Museum of Art and through new works of poetry by exhibition collaborator Professor Philip S. Bryant, a faculty member in the African/African Diaspora Studies Program and the English Department at Gustavus.
According to the publicity statement, one of Catlett’s works, a color linocut entitled I Am the Black Woman (1946-1947) is featured in the exhibit. “In some ways the image is emblematic of the artist, considered by many to be the most significant Black female artist of her period. The early years of her long career were spent in the US until she moved to Mexico in 1946, where she lived the rest of her life. Catlett took her own culture as an African American woman as her primary subject matter, adding to it her adopted Mexican culture when she moved there, married Mexican artist Francisco Mora (1922-2002) and raised a family with him,” the publicity statement says about the exhibit.
Visitors can now see the incredible work of this influential artist right here on campus.
“Catlett’s artworks and Bryant’s poetry are supplemented by paintings by Catlett’s contemporaries, African American artists Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) and Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015), lent by the Art Bridges Foundation,” the publicity statement says.
Art Bridges is the vision of Alice Walton, a philanthropist and arts patron, who founded the renowned Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The mission of the foundation is to expand access to American art in all regions across the United States. “It has also supplied a generous grant to produce a brochure for the exhibit, to support outreach for the exhibition, and to support the visit to campus by Catlett scholar Melanie Herzog, who will present a lecture titled Elizabeth Catlett: Kinship.”
Herzog’s lecture will be presented along with a reading of poetry by Philip S. Bryant in a program on Sunday, Feb 26, 4:00-5:30 p.m. in the Wallenberg Auditorium.