Miriam turned 89 in July and we celebrated with friends and family. Some lifelong Birmingham friends of Miriam’s met us in Chattanooga to celebrate where we visited the Hunter Museum of American Art. The Hunter is a must-see if you like American art and live in the South.
There she saw Birmingham, Alabama artist Amy Pleasant’s bold exhibit “Passing Through”, and discovered some of the late Anniston, Alabama artist George Cress whose work she wasn’t familiar with but very much enjoyed.
She was delighted to see some of her well-known University of Alabama classmate William Christenbery’s Brownie camera photographs of rural Alabama on display. Miriam said, “he was an interesting person, quiet, and even then you knew he was important as an artist.”
There wasn’t a Rothko on display. He was Miriam’s instructor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the summer of 1955. There were prominent abstract expressionist works on display including Stella, Motherwell, Gottlieb, Calder, De Kooning, and Frankenthaler. Miriam’s undergraduate instruction and her time at the Art Students League of New York in the late 1950s was heavily influenced by these abstract expressionist painters, and you can see it reflected in her work from that period.
She also enjoyed the art by the Hudson River School artists and early 20th-century artists like George Bellows. There was really too much to absorb in one trip at the Hunter Museum and we look forward to returning when the heat of the summer is done (90+ temps were a bit much for us).
