LOUISVILLE, KY.- The Speed Art Museum presents Inside|Out, an exhibition illustrating how art and nature will connect at the “New” Speed when the Museum reopens after its unprecedented $50 million renovation and expansion project. Several new acquisitions premier with Inside|Out, including Danuta and Burnt Pine, two beautiful bronze horse sculptures by the artist Deborah Butterfield. Also on view are never before seen large-scale works by Richard Serra and Roy Lichtenstein.
Speed Director and CEO, Dr. Charles Venable, remarked “I am exceptionally excited by the three installations that together form Inside|Out. We have worked very hard to ensure that nature and art are united as never before at the Speed in the expansion. To that end, sculpture will play a major role going forward. The minute you walk or drive onto Speed property after the reopening, sculpture will greet you everywhere. Luckily we already have some wonderful works in the collection like Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure: Angles (1979) that can be placed out-of-doors. However, in anticipation of the new Cressman Art Park and Piazza we have made several important new acquisitions. I think everyone will be thrilled to see them, as well as to learn how art will fit into the new landscape plan.”
Inside|Out is organized into three themes, each of which occupies a separate gallery. The first gallery contains a focus exhibition on the well-known American artist Deborah Butterfield. The centerpiece of this installation is a pair of bronze horses that are being acquired by the Museum. Burnt Pine stands more than seven feet tall, while Danuta is depicted laying down, its head lifted slightly. Butterfield began exploring the horse as a subject of her art in the early 1970s, incorporating humble materials such as mud, sticks, and clay. As with the Speed’s new pieces, she now uses bronze to create her horses. Having now achieved iconic status in the art world, Butterfield’s profoundly beautiful horse sculptures are in the collections of the America’s most important museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In the second gallery visitors encounter a space dedicated to the new Elizabeth P. and Frederick K. Cressman Art Park and Cressman Piazza. Old favorites from the collection like Mark di Suvero’s Pollock’s Indians (1976), Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure: Angles (1979) and Juan Muñoz’s Piggy-Back (1997) are included, as will images of several sculptures that the Museum has recently acquired but not yet received.
Foremost among these new works are Jeppe Hein’s Modified Social Bench C (2008) and Mark Handforth’s enormous Silver Wishbone (2010). Silver Wishbone is an impressive 29-feet-long and was the centerpiece of the artist’s retrospective exhibition Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop recently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, during the 2011 Miami Basel Art Fair. Modified Social Bench C is an interactive piece, where the viewer climbs over or under the rail to sit on the artwork. Visitors will be able to envision these great sculptures within the context of the landscape design though large photos in the exhibition and a giant landscape plan that covers the entire floor of the gallery.
The third and final gallery in Inside|Out brings the theme indoors with a look at interior sculptures and prints made by sculptors. Among the works on view are two new, large-scale acquisitions: Roy Lichtenstein’s Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior (1992) and Richard Serra’s Double Transversal (2004). This gallery will also feature loans of artworks by Tony Cragg, Jim Dine, Martin Puryear, Joel Shapiro, and Kiki Smith from a Louisville private collection.
