WILMINGTON, DE.- The Delaware Art Museum is pleased to present the third annual Masterpieces in Miniature exhibition, on view November 1, 2008 – January 11, 2009. Masterpieces in Miniature is the Museum’s signature holiday display, featuring three-dimensional miniatures by artists from the region. This exhibition offers nine miniature versions of masterpieces by luminaries such as Frederic Remington, Howard Pyle, and Fernando Botero. Eight of the nine vignettes serve as showcases for the miniature artists’ interpretations of original, full-scale works, using a scale where one inch equals one foot. The ninth miniature takes its inspiration from a book rather than a painting: Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden. Five of the nine miniatures are based on works in the Delaware Art Museum’s collection.
The miniature artists drew inspiration from a variety of masterpieces. Wanda Morris Simons recreated the disorderly lodging of Pre-Raphaelite artist William Morris. She included two chairs designed by Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti—both chairs are part of the Museum’s Pre-Raphaelite collection. Marnie King chose Frederick Remington’s The Smoke Signal, a painting owned by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. This painting appeared on a US stamp in 1961 to commemorate Remington’s 100th birthday. Cheryl Miller chose to base her miniature on a scene from Arthur Golden’s novel Memoirs of a Geisha, which Miller considers a masterpiece. She fashioned a vignette of the book’s heroine, Sayuri, performing a fan dance, which was part of her training to become a geisha.
Visitors to the Delaware Art Museum will be able to vote for their favorite miniature until the evening of Friday, December 5, 2008, when the Museum will be open late as part of Wilmington’s Art on the Town program, and admission will be free from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Voting will end at 6:00 p.m., and the first-, second-, and third-place miniatures will be announced at 6:30 p.m. Some of the participating artists will attend this event so they can speak to visitors about their work.
