Chuck Close: the Keith Series On View at Reynolda House Muse

Press Room

"Chuck Close: the Keith Series" On View at Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Monday, December 29, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Sharyn Turner
336.758.5580
sturner@reynoldahouse.org

or Sarah Mansell
336.758.5524
manselss@reynoldahouse.org

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (December 29, 2008) Reynolda House Museum of American Art opens a new exhibition, "Chuck Close: The Keith Series," on Saturday, January 17 in the Northeast Bedroom Gallery of the historic house. The exhibition will be on view through May 31, 2009.

The series depicts Keith Hollingworth, a sculptor who taught with Close at the University of Massachusetts in the late 1960s. Close is known for his large-scale portraits, executed with unusual techniques and media. Throughout his career he has often used friends and family members as his subjects. The six drawings and one study in the exhibition, all from the Reynolda House extensive permanent collection, show Close experimenting with various ways of representing his subject, composing the image with a mass of small dots or marks, almost like hand-made pixels. Although Close is certainly interested in exploring Keith's identity through the series, he inserts his own presence into the images as well: three of the drawings are composed of the artist's own fingerprints.

Also on view at Reynolda House, "Early American Portraits" continues in the West Bedroom Gallery through March 16, 2009.

Reynolda House will open its major spring exhibition, "American Impressions: Selections from the National Academy Museum," on February 28, 2009 in the main gallery.

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation's premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its permanent collection. Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features traveling and original exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and other events. The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150.

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