ARTISTS FEATURED

Enrique Alférez
Lynda Benglis
Willie Birch
Jim Blanchard
Dusti Bongé
Mel Chin
Jon Corbino
Michael Lowe Crespo
Charles Dellschau
Thornton Dial
George Dureau
George Febres
Roy Ferdinand
Alan Gerson
Rolland Golden
William Goodman
William Hawkins
Horton Humble
Clementine Hunter
Susan Jamison
Alexa Kleinbard
Ronald Lockett
Hudson Marquez
Helen Burkhart Mayfield
James Michalopoulos
Reginald Mitchell
Kristin Meyers
Benjamin Franklin Perkins
George Schmidt
Ersy Schwartz
Joe Shannon
Ed Smith
Jimmy Lee Sudduth
Sidonie Villere
Purvis Young

HOST COMMITTEE
Roger H. Ogden & Ken Barnes
Suzie & Ted Bloch III M.D
Kohlmeyer Circle
Schley Family Fund
Mrs. WW Kreft
Henry & Pat Shane
Laura & Sonny Shields
Donna Vitter
Michael Wilkinson

Preservative Force brings together recently acquired works from a diverse group of artists working in various styles and media. By presenting a range of voices that have been added to the collection to tell the story of the American South, this exhibition encourages the viewer to examine the myriad ways artists use their own private languages to poetically express concepts of place, identity and aesthetics.

The title of this exhibition, Preservative Force, is drawn from a line in Richard Hugo’s book of poetics, “The “Triggering Town” (1979). In this influential book of essays on writing, Hugo suggests that poets develop a private vocabulary in which they are emotionally invested. Through this private language, the poet can powerfully convey their vision. By extending this idea to the visual arts, Preservative Force explores the many private visual languages of Southern artists through recent additions to Ogden Museum’s permanent collection. The title may also be seen as a reference to the Museum itself as a preservative force, caring for the works contained within.

“With the private poet, the words, at least certain key words, mean something to the poet they don’t mean to the reader. A sensitive reader perceives this relation of poet to word and in a way that relation – the strange way the poet emotionally possesses his vocabulary – is one of the mysteries and preservative forces of the art.” – Richard Hugo, “The Triggering Town”