That ’70s Show At Berkshire Museum

That ’70s Show, on view through May 30, 2009, is a blast from the past and a sure cure for the winter doldrums. It features more than 20 artworks from the era coined the “me decade” by novelist Tom Wolfe in New York magazine in August 1976.

The exhibition is composed of diverse art and objects from Berkshire Museum’s permanent collection and includes some hidden treasures that had been safely tucked away in storage since the days of platform shoes and pet rocks.

The exhibition is curated by the museum’s Executive Director Stuart A. Chase and includes a Who’s Who of artists from the 1970s, including some notables from Berkshire County, such as revolutionary glass artist and Pittsfield native Thomas Patti, whose early work is represented in the exhibition with three small-scale pieces from 1976, 1977 and 1979.

“It’s a great pleasure to have the opportunity to develop fresh, new exhibitions with selections from the Berkshire Museum’s collection,” said Chase. “These stunning pieces from the 1970s are fine examples of what was happening—what was groundbreaking, even—in the art world 30 to 40 years ago. “To provide some context, we’ve included a list of quintessentially seventies’ phenomena—from disco, mood rings, and smiley faces to Earth Day, environmental art, and affirmative action. We’ve also noted some interesting facts about the decade, when the average annual salary in America was $7,564 and a loaf of bread cost just 24-cents.”

In addition to glass sculptures by Patti, the exhibition features the work of other artists with roots in Berkshire County, such as a large acrylic on canvas, Sectar (A-Z Series), created from 1975-77 by Nancy Graves, who was also born and raised in Pittsfield. The exhibition includes a highly-detailed oil painting from 1977 of the Women’s Club in Pittsfield by Pittsfield-based artist Richard Britell; and Stephanie at Alice’s, a silkscreen by Juanita Giuffre promoting a 1977 Stephanie Barber concert at the legendary Alice’s Restaurant in Stockbridge.

Highlights of the exhibition include a 1971 mixed media work by seminal American artist Robert Rauschenberg, who died in 2008. Titled Opal Gospel, it is a multiple object composed of ten movable acrylic panels with imagery that relates to Rauschenberg’s Cherokee heritage. Also on view is a colorful and graphic silkscreen created by Red Grooms in 1973, called Mango, Mango, a 1973 lithograph by Mary Bauermeister entitled An Art Investment Report, and a 1973 lithograph, I Need Yellow, by Helen Frankenthaler.

Other ’70s icons represented in That ’70s Show include the work of Edward Avedisian, John Gregoropoulos and Shozo Nagano. The exhibition features a 1973 lithograph/collage by James Rosenquist called Horizontal Bar; a 1974 Larry Rivers’ lithograph, Living at the Movies; two arresting black-and-white photographs, Livestock Auction and Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Crumb, Marathon New York, taken by George W. Gardner in 1975; and Yucateca con Fruta, a 1974 silkscreen by Francisco Zuniga. -- www.berkshiremuseum.org

Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.