Works by Mississippi artist Hull join
permanent collection; Sugimoto painting to hang in Mills Center once again
CONWAY,
Arkansas (July 19, 2023)—The Hendrix College Permanent Art Collection has grown
by two pieces and an existing part of the collection has returned home this
summer, said staff of the Windgate Museum of Art
at Hendrix College
(WMA), custodian of the
collection.
The WMA recently
acquired two examples of Marie Hull’s artwork for the permanent
collection. Hull (1890-1980) was one of Mississippi’s most beloved artists and
teachers who exhibited in the United States and Europe. Hull
studied artistic movements from impressionism to modernism in Tennessee,
Pennsylvania, Colorado, Connecticut and Paris, France, and by the 1930s,
her paintings were exhibited in San Francisco, California, New York City,
and Paris. Her work is in prominent collections across the South, including the
permanent collection of the Mississippi Museum of
Art in Jackson, Mississippi.
“The WMA is
excited to welcome these pieces as we build the permanent collection to
reflect the rich history and diverse cultures of the American South through
visual art,” said Christian Cutler, the museum’s director.
Cutler noted
that the acquisitions of Pencil Study of Doves and Benachi Ave.,
Biloxi, MS were made with significant assistance from a Hendrix
College alum who wishes to remain anonymous.
A longtime piece
of the permanent collection, Arrival at Camp Jerome by Henry Sugimoto,
has returned to campus after spending nine months in northwest Arkansas, where
it was being cleaned by one of the nation’s top art conservators. The painting,
a celebrated fixture on the Hendrix College campus since its purchase in 1944,
will soon return to its place in the Mills Center for Social Sciences.
In 1943, Hendrix College art faculty members Louis Freund,
Elsie Freund, and Floy K. Hanson visited the Jerome Relocation Center, where
they met Henry Sugimoto and encouraged his work. Mrs. Freund and Ms. Hanson
arranged an exhibition of 15 paintings at Hendrix in February 1944 to publicize
the artist and the plight of interned Japanese Americans.
Henry and Susie Sugimoto attended the opening and a reception
held in their honor. Paul Faris, a professor of English and photography at
Hendrix, photographed the occasion. At the exhibit’s conclusion, the College
purchased Arrival at Camp Jerome, which depicts Henry, Susie, and their
daughter Madeleine arriving at the camp in 1942.
Professor Faris and his wife, Ann, visited the war relocation
camp in July 1945, documenting the work of Sugimoto and other artists in the
camp. Several of their photographs and descriptions were featured in Allen
Eaton’s Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War
Relocation Camps, published in 1952, with a foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt.
“Arrival at Camp Jerome is a painting of deep
significance,” Cutler said. “Not only is it an autobiographical work that marks
a distinct period of injustice in the life of the United States, but the way it
became part of the College’s collection also highlights how members of the Hendrix
community responded to that injustice. They sought out human connection with
those who were interned in Arkansas and advocated for them.”
Arrival
at Camp Jerome will be reinstalled in the lobby of the Mills
Center in August. Information about Henry Sugimoto and his visit to Hendrix
College remains on display in Mills, along with a selection of Paul Faris’s
photographs of Sugimoto and the camp.
About
Hendrix College
A
private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix College consistently
earns recognition as one of the country’s leading liberal arts institutions,
and is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the
Way You Think About Colleges. Its academic quality and rigor, innovation, and
value have established Hendrix as a fixture in numerous college guides, lists,
and rankings. Founded in 1876, Hendrix has been affiliated with the United
Methodist Church since 1884. To learn more, visit www.hendrix.edu.