Exhibition

A Riot of Color: The Fabric Workshop and Museum in collaboration with Ruth Fine

September 13, 2013–December 15, 2013

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, in collaboration with Ruth Fine, FWM Quilt (detail), 2013.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) presents A Riot of Color: The Fabric Workshop and Museum in collaboration with Ruth Fine. “Starting with Fabric, Branching into Everything”: this title of a 2003 New York Times article about The Fabric Workshop and Museum describes the breath of this unique institution. Founded in 1977 by Marion Boulton Stroud, FWM has facilitated extraordinary work by scores of artists working in a wide variety of materials including steel, copper, brass and aluminum; live flowers; clay; video and sound; polyurethane and silicone rubber; wood and paper; horse hair and hog intestine. This Riot of Color window display returns to the FWM’s origins to reveal the brilliant range of work artists have created there within the tradition of printed textiles. Included are designs by Harry Anderson, Edna Andrade, Ed Baynard, James Carpenter, Tony Costanzo, Roy DeForest, Richard DeVore, Frank Faulkner, Howard Finster, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Renée Green, Diane Itter, Jun Kaneko, Steve Keister, Ken Dawson Little, Lysiane Luong, Phillip Maberry, Kim MacConnel, Maisin Artists of Papua New Guinea, Lynn Mandelbaum, Virgil Marti, James Melchert, Mineo Mizuno, Carmen Oquendo, Judy Rifka, Patrick Siler, Kiki Smith, Lizbeth Stewart, Will Stokes, Jr., Richard Tuttle, Robert Venturi, Nami Yamamoto, and Betty Woodman.

Location

The New Temporary Contemporary
1222 Arch Street
Front Window
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Opening Reception

First Friday, October 4, 2013, 6:00–8:00 pm

About the Curator

Ruth Fine is a curator and writer based in Philadelphia. Formerly the Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings and then of Special Projects in Modern Art, both at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Fine conceived and administered The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States project, assisting the collectors in making gifts to one museum in each of the fifty United States. She is on the Board of the Fabric Workshop and Museum, where she has organized two exhibitions; and she chairs the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Board. As curator of the National Gallery’s 1994 exhibition The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein she coordinated the Lichtenstein print catalogue raisonné which accompanied that show. Fine also has organized exhibitions focused on American artists including Romare Bearden, Mel Bochner, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Jasper Johns, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe. A painter and printmaker, Fine has published several books with Claire Van Vliet’s Janus Press in Vermont which are in museum and library collections throughout the world, among them, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Fine attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, received her B.F.A. from the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) and her M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.