Rackstraw Downes
Betty Cuningham Gallery
www.bettycuninghamgallery.com
Parrish Art Museum
www.parrishart.org
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
www.aldrichart.org
Rackstraw Downes, the veteran painter of exquisite realistic landscapes and urban places will mount three exhibitions this summer—at Betty Cuningham Gallery in New York City; the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY; and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT—providing a multifaceted glimpse into a lifetime of intellectually grounded and meticulous work and its place in the history of art.
Betty Cuningham Gallery
Rackstraw Downes: A Selection of Drawings, 1980–2010
June 3 to July 30, 2010
Reception: Thursday, June 3; 6 to 8 pm
This survey of drawings by Downes will include approximately twenty works on paper. Downes moves with the seasons, thus the drawings included in the exhibition cover a vast array of geographic locations: Maine where he lived in the late ’70s and ’80s, New York City where he currently spends seven months of the year, and Presidio, TX, where he spends the winter months. Most drawings were done on-site as a means to investigate sites for his large-scale work. As he draws precisely from observation, without manipulating the scene before him, both the drawings and paintings are devoid of narrative, rhetoric or cliché. Betty Cuningham Gallery is located at 541 West 25th Street in New York City. For more information please call: 212.242.2772.
Parrish Art Museum
Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972–2008
June 20 to August 8, 2010
Reception: Saturday, June 19; 6 to 8 pm
This first major museum survey devoted to Downes, whose minutely detailed conceptual realism defies traditional categorization, consists of twenty-five paintings. Organized by Klaus Ottmann, the Parrish’s Robert Lehman Curator, Onsite Paintings traces the artist’s career through major examples of his work executed over three decades. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, published in association with D Giles Limited, London; it will travel to the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, following its debut at The Parrish. The Parrish Art Museum is located at 25 Jobs Lane in Southampton, New York . For more information please call: 631.283.2118.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Rackstraw Downes: Under the Westside Highway
June 27, 2010, to January 2, 2011
Reception: Sunday, June 27; 2:30 to 5:30 pm
Downes’s exhibition at The Aldrich will be centered on one work, entitled Under the Westside Highway at 145th Street: The North River Water Pollution Control Plant. Organized, by director Harry Philbrick, the project will not only feature the final multi-panel painting, but also include all of the preliminary pencil drawings, subsequent oil sketches, and many months of detailed journal entries that he completed in order to meticulously capture the scene. The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is located at 258 Main Street in Ridgefield, CT. For more information please call: 203.438.4519.
About the Artist:
Rackstraw Downes was born in Kent, England and received his BFA and MFA in Painting from Yale University. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, most notably The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2009 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1998. In 1999 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work can be seen in a host of public collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; the Farnsworth Museum of Art, Rockland, ME; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Contact: Pamela Ruggio
Phone: 203.438.4519
Email: pruggio@aldrichart.org
