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The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is the oldest fine arts museum in Alabama. Noted for its outstanding collection of American paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, the Museum also boasts an impressive collection of Old Master prints, Southern regional art, Studio Glass and decorative arts.

The Museum's permanent collection is complemented by an exciting array of traveling exhibitions and stimulating educational programming that examines the diverse facets of the world of fine art.

Exhibits

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts presents Objects of Wonder: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art July 3 through October 10, 2010

Montgomery, AL – The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is pleased to present a remarkable selection of still-life paintings, sculptures, photographs, and objets d’art from the collection of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The exhibition includes paintings by Pablo Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe, photographs by Edward Weston and Robert Mapplethorpe, and still-life compositions by other stars of the 20th-century art world. There are also paintings by notable 19th-century European and American painters such as Gustave Courbet and William M. Harnett. Paintings and sculpture by 18th-century Chinese artists and 17th-century Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish masters are also included.

Since antiquity, artists have depicted fruit and flowers, dead fish and fowl, meats and vegetables, and sometimes skulls and bones in small-scale images that are usually set in domestic interiors. The skulls symbolize the brevity of life, and they are often set in stark contrast with a sumptuous profusion of flowers and foods, especially fresh fruit, seafood, and game. Some of the pictures also have religious symbolism disguised in the lilies, roses, and other ostensibly everyday objects arranged in an apparently unassuming manner. Even the ants and butterflies attracted to the fruits and flowers hold symbolic meaning for the artists and audiences knowledgeable of the iconography.

Some artists presented their still-life subjects in such a realistic manner that viewers are tricked into believing they are seeing the actual object rather than a representation of the object. These compositions are known as trompe-l’oeil, a French term that means “fool the eye.” Other artists, especially those active in the twentieth century when pictorial abstraction vied with mimesis, use still-life motifs for different reasons. Photographers have adapted the genre to their own purposes, and contemporary artists have expanded still life into new realms, creating facsimiles and quirky portrayals of traditional still-life subjects.

Objects of Wonder: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art is organized by the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. The exhibition is sponsored locally by the Aaron Aronov Family Foundation, Laura and Barrie Harmon, Jackson Thornton & Co., Michelle and Daniel Hughes, and The James W. Wilson, Jr. and Wynona W. Wilson Family Foundation.

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