From the turn of the twentieth century to his death in the late 1920s, F. Walter Lawrence was a prominent jeweler in Newark, creating sumptuous, elegant jewelry in the art nouveau style. Respected and successful during his lifetime but forgotten in death, Lawrence favored art over inherent value, choosing wonderful gemstones because of color rather than cost. Several examples of his work, set with ancient Roman glass fragments, were exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Lawrence made beautiful, hand-made jewelry and elegant silver. The exhibition includes approximately three dozen objects, which offer a glimpse into this unknown masters work.

Location: Contemporary Craft Gallery, North Wing, First Floor
Guest Curator: Janet Zapata, nationally-known jewelry expert

The trappings and the trimmings of a traditional Victorian holiday are re-created in the 1885 Ballantine House, a restored National Historic Landmark. The historically accurate installation, complete with period menus, offers visitors the opportunity to step back in time to learn about nineteenth century life and traditions.

 

Location: Ballantine House, First Floor
Curator: Ulysses Grant Dietz, Curator of
Decorative Arts

From a Colonial-era portrait by John Singleton Copley to a Pop-era Campbell’s Tomato Juice box by Andy Warhol, The Newark Museum has one of the world’s most distinguished collections of American art. The Museum presents an entirely new experience of these works - more than 300 in all, installed and interpreted in 32,000 square feet of gallery space - under the title, Picturing America.

Presented in galleries originally designed by architect Michael Graves, which have received new lighting and bold colors based on historical sources, the masterworks in Picturing America come to life through an installation that connects the artists’ visual motifs and strategies to broader issues in America’s history and culture.

Since its founding in 1909, The Newark Museum has been at the forefront of collecting American art. It was among the first to acquire works by contemporary American artists (who at the time included John Sloan, Robert Henri, George Bellows, Max Weber, Henry Ossawa Tanner and John Marin) and was similarly far-sighted in presenting works by African-American artists, photographers and folk artists.

Some 250 years’ worth of painting and sculptures join in eye-opening combinations with objects in other media to tell the story of Picturing America.

In the gallery devoted to “Romantic Portraits for the Eastern Cities,” paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully and Rembrandt Peale appear next to superb examples of Federal-style furniture - the sort of property that was owned by the portrait-sitters and carefully depicted with them. In the gallery on artists in the West, the spiritualized landscapes of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran mingle with Native American works that offer a contrasting vision of God’s presence in nature. In “The City and Modernism,” paintings by Charles Sheeler and Joseph Stella, reflecting the excitement of new technology and the experience of the industrial city, are shown with photographs of the same subjects by Berenice Abbott and Edward Steichen and a cocktail table of gleaming metal by Donald Deskey.

Location: American Art Galleries, North Wing, First and Second Floors
Curator: Holly Pyne Connor, Ph.D., Consulting Curator of American Art
Funding: This exhibition is made possible in part through the support of The Henry Luce Foundation National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, New Jersey State Council on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.

The Museum’s renowned Tibetan Collection encompasses the breadth of religious and lay culture in Tibet from the thirteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, with the magnificent centerpiece, the Tibetan Buddhist Altar (see below). Reinstalled for the exhibition, From the Sacred Realm: Treasures of Tibetan Art in the Collection of The Newark Museum (October 15, 1999 - January 23, 2000), the Tibetan Galleries now include an authentically painted entrance foyer adjacent to the Altar, which creates a visual “passage” to the entire suite of galleries. One recent acquisition to the collection is a rare Tibetan ceremonial crown, dating from the fourteenth century. The headpiece is composed of five leaves, each about six inches high in a shape suggesting a lotus petal. The crown was worn in Buddhist rituals, usually by a monk.

Location: Tibetan Galleries, North Wing, Third Floor
Curator: Valrae Reynolds, Curator of Asian Collections

---

CONTACT INFO

---

For more information on SOFA NEW YORK 2004, June 3-6 at the Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Ave. and 67th, call 800.563.SOFA (7632) or e-mail: info@sofaexpo.com. For editorial support, contact Barbara Smythe-Jones at 800.357.SOFA (7632) or e-mail barbara@sofaexpo.com. For assistance downloading hi-res images of artwork for sale at SOFA NEW YORK in the Press Images/e-press kit section of www.sofaexpo.com and for press credentials, contact Jen Haybach at 866.870.SOFA (7632) or jen@sofaexpo.com.