In 1996, drawings for two children’s books by Rochester-born artist (and former Creative Workshop student) Roger Essley were on view at MAG in conjunction with the exhibition Many Faces, Many Places: Contemporary Children’s Book Illustration. This year, one of the drawings is back on the wall in the new exhibition Creative Workshop Living Memory Alumni Show: Part 1.
More about the Living Memory Show
1996 article from the MAG archives
Pictured: Original drawing from Reunion by Roger Essley.
Light-sensitive drawings that are usually off view because of their fragile nature. Works that are awaiting conservation or repair. Odd but interesting objects that simply don’t fit any of the Gallery’s storylines.
From an Egyptian storage jar dating to before 3400 BCE to a 2003 painting by Rochester artist Carol Acquilano, the rarely seen treasures in It Came from the Vault range across the centuries. They include works acquired long ago—Eugen Bracht’s painting Morning Star (pictured at left) came into the collection in 1913, the year of the Gallery’s founding—and works acquired in the last decade.
The artists represented include a number who played important roles at MAG. Among them (to cite only a few) are Ralph Avery, Peter Berg, Emma Lampert Cooper, E. E. Cummings, George L. Herdle, Robert Marx, John C. Menihan, Luvon Sheppard and Frans Wildenhain.
Also on view are works by such major names in art history as Edgar Degas (whose Dancers is pictured at right), Walt Disney, Albrecht Dürer, Helen Frankenthaler, Thomas Gainsborough, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Hans Hofmann, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Paul Klee, Käthe Kollwitz, Fernand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-François Millet, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Rembrandt van Rijn, Edward Ruscha, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Joyce Treiman and Jerome Witkin.
Stop by the Grand Gallery to see the show, which is on view through June 9.
In a recent issue, American Craft magazine singled out Rochester in the 1950s as a “craft hotbed.” So it comes as no surprise that at least 11 artists in the 2012 exhibition Crafting Modernism: Midcentury American Art and Design had connections to RIT’s School for American Crafts (SAC). Among them was Ruth Clark Radakovich, who lived in Rochester from 1955 to 1959 and studied with SAC metalsmith Jack Prip (also in the show).
Two works by Radakovich—a cocktail ring and a futuristic door—were on view in Crafting Modernism. And you can still see work by her husband, Svetozar. His Bird Form, from the Gallery’s permanent collection, is currently on view in the Folk and American Decorative Arts Gallery. You may also have seen one of his paintings, a prize winner in the 1956 Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition. Seascape—Dubrovnik was on view last summer in conjunction with the 63rd Finger Lakes.
While in Rochester, both Radakoviches taught in the Gallery’s Creative Workshop; in the undated archive photo above, Ruth (standing) is shown with Workshop students.
In 1959, the couple left Rochester with their two daughters and settled north of San Diego, California. Ruth died in 1975, Svetozar in 1998.
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