Some Andrew Wyeth pieces never before displayed publicly can now be seen at the Brandywine Museum of Art.
They come from a formerly private collection of nearly 7,000 pieces of Wyeth’s work that Inaugural Wyeth Foundation Curator William Coleman is diving into.
“Behind the scenes we are working on publishing the complete works of Andrew Wyeth," Coleman says. "Digitizing this collection, generally welcoming more people into this remarkable creative legacy in the history of American art.”
Andrew Wyeth: Home Spaces recently opened - featuring nearly 50 paintings and drawings of local buildings that inspired Wyeth over his almost eight-decades-long career.
“The exhibition will be up for almost exactly six months, through July 13, that is our current closing date, and that is because so much of the work in the show is watercolor on paper, which is very light sensitive," Coleman says. "So anytime you have a chance to see Andrew Wyeth watercolor work, it’s a special opportunity. These things are going to go back into storage, the official guidance of conservators is you only show a watercolor for six months and every five years.”
Coleman adds that despite Wyeth’s reputation as a realist, he was not an anti-modernist, and was open to new ideas and abstraction in his art.
He says the exhibition shows sides to Wyeth that most people don’t know – something he hopes to continue offering as he works with this collection. And Coleman says that gives people a chance to take a fresh look at Wyeth.
“It's a really nice problem to have that this artist is so well loved that people think they know the whole story already," Coleman says. "This is an artist famed for Christina's World, that classic image of a figure in a field looking up at a house in the distance.”
Andrew Wyeth: Home Spaces runs through July 13th at the Brandywine Museum of Art.
