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Andrew Wyeth retrospective offers hidden gems

The Brandywine River Museum of Art is taking a look back at the career of iconic regional painter Andrew Wyeth.

Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work since his death in 2009. More than 100 paintings, spanning from the 1930s-2000s, take up two floors of the museum that's quite literally built on his family’s land.

"The museum has been wanting to do this exhibition for a long time and I think it just expands our audience. It brings people who may not know Wyeth's Work, who may think they know Wyeth and haven't been here in a long time because they think they've seen all of Andrew Wyeth," Curator Audrey Lewis said.

The exhibit showcases many of the lesser known watercolors the artist created before transitioning into his better known tempera paintings.

A few rare works are part of the retrospective, including Wyeth's final painting Goodbye?, completed just months before his death in 2009.

"(It) is rarely shown at all. So that is a unique moment to see that painting," Lewis said.

Thin Ice, which Wyeth painted while in Japan in 1969, will be on display for the first time in America as part of the exhibition.

The retrospective opens June 24 and runs through September. It will travel to the Seattle Art Museum in October.

Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from theDelaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.