Although the Westmoreland Museum, is only fifty years old, it's well on the way to creating one of the more important collections of American art anywhere. Partly, this comes from the region's wealth and old money, as well as that a lot of the collection was built during a period when American realism, "Regionalism" and early modernism were considered unimportant. Already, it houses probably, the best and deepest collection of art and fine crafts made in Southwestern, PA.
As part of it's 50 year birthday, they invited four different art lovers to roam their store rooms and pick of their favorite works.
"A collaborative exhibition curated by friends of the museum—an artist, collector, art critic, and patron—all taken from the Museum's permanent collection. This exhibition will offer the unique perspectives of each of the guest curators while bringing together works from the collection that are seldom seen together. The guest curators: Adrienne Heinrich (artist), Marty O'Brien (collector); Graham Shearing (art critic); and Anne Robertshaw (patron)."
Take my word for it both Graham Shearing and Adrienne Heinrich have an "eye".
Also on view will be a show by Pittsburgh artist, James Osher which deals with the way we look at paintings in museums called, Three Seconds with the Masters.
"With the understanding that the average visitor to a museum or gallery spends more time reading labels than viewing the artwork, the artist has intentionally selected lengthy descriptive labels that require more than three seconds to read. The dynamic created by this work expands on the concept of "word as art" and while the labels do not have any contextual relationship to the paintings with which they are paired, they pose the question of how much curatorial influence they really have over the subject of the work."
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