During the month of October, George Adams Gallery visits MSP in Room 107 to present a survey of Robert Arneson’s self-portraits, the first since SFMOMA’s Self-Reflections in 1997. The exhibition, which was presented at the George Adams Gallery in New York this summer, includes works in ceramic, bronze, and pastels on paper, with notable examples of Arneson’s earliest and his last self-portraits. The presentation at MSP will also feature several major works not shown in New York, including a hand- painted bronze casting of CA Artist and a late unique sculpture hand-painted in oils on cast paper.

Robert Arneson (1930–1992) was born and raised in Benicia California where he lived and worked for most of his life. Along with Roy DeForest, Wayne Thiebaud, and William T. Wiley, Arneson taught for many years at UC Davis. Arneson exhibited widely throughout his career and is recognized as a key figure in the re-consideration of ceramics as a sculptural medium. His work can be found in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Phoenix Art Museum; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; and the Australian National Gallery, Canberra. He has been the subject of several traveling retrospectives, in 1974, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; in 1986-87, organized by the Des Moines Art Center, and posthumously in 1993, at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. A major monograph by Jonathan Fineberg was published by UC California Press in 2013. The George Adams Gallery has exhibited Arneson’s work regularly since 1975 and has represented his Estate since 1992.

George Adams Gallery