Sedalia, Missouri.- The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art on the State Fair Community College campus will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the museum’s opening with the exhibition “10! The First Decade” on view from February 4th through May 27th. The museum-wide survey of the Daum’s permanent collection will feature 125 artworks ranging from 1966 to 2010, including painting, ceramics, graphics, photography, and mixed media collections. Some selections are making their debut and others are familiar pieces in the collection. They will be arranged in groupings that show shared traits among objects that date from different decades, represent distinct media or conform to disparate movements.
The museum opened to the public in January 2002. It is named for collector and benefactor Harold F. Daum, M.D., and contains nine galleries devoted to the exhibition of art created since the mid-20th century. At its founding, the permanent collection comprised 300 artworks collected by Daum. Today, the collection includes more than 1,000 works of art in various media by some of the most celebrated artists of the last 60 years.Daum’s core collection continues to determine the nature and kind of all subsequent additions to the permanent collection.
The primary holdings are in the areas of painting, ceramics and prints, but there are growing collections of photographs, sculpture and works on paper. The core of the painting collection includes works by artists associated with Post-Painterly Abstraction, including Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, Friedel Dzubas, and Gene Davis. Tangents of this movement are represented by Larry Poons, Walter Darby Bannard and Laddy John Gill. The collection of ceramics is centered on large-scale sculpture and includes signature works by many of the contemporary ceramists responsible for the singular achievements made in this medium during the last 50 years, among them Peter Voulkos, Ron Nagle, Marc Leuthold, Annabeth Rosen, Ramon Elozua, and Sunkoo Yuh. The print collection includes compositions by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns; pop artists Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist and Roy Lichtenstein; conceptualists Sol LeWitt and Chuck Close; neo-expressionists Eric Fischl and David Salle; as well as graphics by celebrated figures like Louise Bourgeois and Richard Serra.
The exhibition also presents 30 highlights of the museum’s collection of more than 450 examples of contemporary photography, ranging from documentary work and social commentary to portraiture, landscape and abstraction. Included are works by Ansel Adams, Linda Connor, Jack Welpott, JoAnn Verburg, and Joel Meyerowitz. Another significant concentration of the collection focuses on work by Midwestern artists, many of whom live in Missouri, including Keith Jacobshagen, Warren Rosser, Philomena Bennet, Lupus Garrett, Anne Lindberg, and Gary Passanise.
The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art sheds light on the stimulating complexity of modern and contemporary art by collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting artworks created since the mid-20th century. In concert with the faculty and students of State Fair Community College, the Daum works to enhance the cultural and educational life of the college, the city of Sedalia, and the 14-county area of central Missouri that comprises its primary audience. The educational mission of State Fair Community College guides and informs every aspect of the Museum and its operation. As part of an institution of higher learning responsive to the entire needs of the college, it works in collaboration with faculty and students. Through its educational programming, the Museum enhances the cultural life of its immediate community. The Museum is uniquely positioned to serve Missouri’s central region and to specifically attract patrons traveling between its two major cultural centers, Kansas City and St. Louis. It is not duplicated in its region. The Museum constitutes a cultural “oasis,” dedicated to the highest level of aesthetic and educational standards to implement innovative, humane, and enlightening programs. The Daum offers a temporary exhibition series that changes three times each year. It houses nine exhibition galleries on three levels, with a combined area of 9,300 square feet. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.daummuseum.org