SYRACUSE, NY.- The Everson Museum of Art announced the purchase of several new works for the Museum’s collection. These works, created by artists across the country working in a variety of media, reflect the Museum’s mission to diversify its collection and more fully represent multiple perspectives, identities, and stories.
The acquisitions were made during Miami’s Art Week, which took place the first week of December, and included numerous art fairs. The Everson acquired a total of nine pieces purchased at the following fairs: Art Basel Miami, Independent Art Fair, New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), and INK Miami.
The acquisitions are among several others made since fall 2020, when the Everson established a fund focused on purchasing works by emerging and established artists, artists of color, women artists, and other historically marginalized groups.
Among the artists represented is Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, a first-generation American raised between Missouri and Nigeria, who uses culturally-significant items to explore the African experience, as well as divisions within Black culture.
Up-and-comer Matthew Kirk’s piece, Believe You Me, weaves together industrial materials covered with symbols that explore his Navajo heritage.
Red Robe by Katherine Sherwood, a painter and Professor Emerita of Art Practice and Disability Studies at UC Berkeley, poignantly depicts the vulnerabilities of the human body. Sherwood suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at age 44, which paralyzed the right side of her body, and ultimately required her to relearn how to paint with her left hand.
Born in Mexico and now based in Miami, artist Pepe Mar uses an experiential approach to mixed media that explores cultural alienation.
Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar connects themes of female-identity, history, and cultures of the African diaspora in large-scale woodcuts, including the recent Blonde Dreams.
According to Everson Museum of Art Director Elizabeth Dunbar, some of these works, and several others acquired recently, will be on view in an upcoming exhibition opening in January 2022, curated by Assistant Curator Steffi Chappell. "We are eager to share these new works and introduce these artists to our community. 'The Everson is for everyone' isn't just a slogan, it is the principal intention that motivates our collecting and exhibiting practices," said Dunbar.
