2008 in Review

It's the last day of the year, time to take stock of the year gone by. What an exciting year it has been!

I created a number of artworks I'm proud of. I drove across and around the country with my wife, something I've wanted to do for many years. And I continued to immerse myself in painting and sculpture by visiting museums around the country and really enjoying many of the works I saw. I don't know which one to show on today's post, but I guess it will come to me before I finish the post. The museums I visited this year include:

• Barnes Foundation, Merion PA
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA
• Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA
• University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA
• Delaware Art Museum
• Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Metropolitan Museum, New York
• Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Frick Museum, New York
• Neue Galerie, New York
• New York City Waterfalls (Olafur Eliasson)
• Dia Beacon, Beacon NY
• Mass MoCA, North Adams MA
• Bruce Museum, Greenwich CT
• Baltimore Art Museum
• Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (Louis Comfort Tiffany collection), Winter Park FL
• Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park FL
• Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens, Winter Park FL
• National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
• Phillips Collection, Washington DC
• Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
• Laguna Beach Museum of Art, CA
• Frederick R Weisman Foundation, Beverly Hills CA
• LA MOCA, Los Angeles CA
• Kimbell Art Museum, Ft Worth TX
• Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Ft Worth TX
• Dallas Museum of Art
• Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas TX
• Georgia O'Keefe Museum, Santa Fe NM
• LA County Museum of Art (LACMA)
• Broad Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA
• Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach CA
• Denver Museum of Art (including preview of Clyfford Still Museum collection)
• Denver Contemporary Art Museum
• Whitney Museum of Western Art, Cody WY
• Sculpture Garden, Buffalo Bill Museum, Cody WY
• Frederick R Weisman Museum at U of MN, Minneapolis MN
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN
• Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Aside from creating art and visiting museums, I also read Hilary Spurling's extensive 2 volume biography of Henri Matisse which I thoroughly enjoyed, Matisse's essay Notes of a Painter, Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art, an illuminating collection of essays and letters called Writings on Art - Mark Rothko, and The Writings of Robert Motherwell. And now I've embarked on John Richardson's 3 volume biography A Life of Picasso! I also read several national art magazines each month.

I've finally selected not one but two images to go with this post, both colorful although created 500 years apart, and both from the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft Worth TX, our first scheduled art museum stop on our cross country trip (I visited all the art museums from the Kimbell to the end of the list on our summer cross country trip). Fra Angelico's 1429-1430 small painting The Apostle Saint James the Greater Freeing the Magician Hermogenes, and a late Henri Matisse from 1946, Asia.

I didn't know I'd done so much this year! No wonder I feel like I've been busy. A review really is very valuable for appreciating all one has accomplished. I hope you've had a great year too. Thanks for reading my blog.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!

You can view some of my 3-D paintings and mixed media works on my website, www.jayrolfe.com/.