PRESS RELEASE

January 30, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fresno Art Museum

2233 North First Street

Fresno CA 93703

559-441-4221

fresnoartmuseum.org

WINTER/SPRING EXHIBITIONS

OPEN FEBRUARY 3, 2024

The Fresno Art Museum opens its WINTER/SPRING EXHIBITION SERIES with four new exhibitions, running through June 30, 2024.

An exhibition reception and artist/curator talks will be held on Friday, February 3, 2024 from 5 to 8 pm. Press can call 559-441-4221 to be added to the guest list for the reception.

Award-winning llustrator John Parra, creator of the book Growing an Artist will be attending the opening reception on February 2.

Go to fresnoartmuseum.org for more information.

Drawn from the permanent collection of the Georgia Museum of Art, this exhibition of 27 woodblock prints by some of the most influential and well-known ukiyo-e artists explores the culture of luxury and pleasure-seeking that reigned during Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868).

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that was popular from the 16th to 19th centuries. The work ukiyo originally expressed the Buddhist concept of the transitory nature of life, but during the Edo period it came to mean embracing the joy of life and its “fleeting pleasures.” The word translates as “to float” and ukiyo-e literally means “pictures of the floating world.”

The Edo Period, when Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate, was a time of economic prosperity. The merchant class enjoyed a level of affluence previously unknown to them, and they turned their attention to the extravagant luxuries and pleasures that they could now afford.

Woodcuts have been an integral part of Japanese art since 770 CE and were commonly available. In 17th-century Japan, people began buying them in great numbers as they were easily affordable. Traditionally, only the elite were represented in Japanese art, but artists began producing images of more everyday things such as beautiful courtesans and geishas, kabuki actors, and romantic landscapes. For the first time, artists were inspired by the interests of the common people. The prints were mass-marketed, and by the mid-19th century the circulation of the prints ran into the thousands. Prior to World War II, ukiyo-e prints were not considered items of great value because of their abundance, but following the war, they were embraced as an important element of Japanese culture, influential on the history of art, and as valuable works of art in their own right.



Organized by the Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, this program is supported in part by the Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. The Council is a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Fig Garden Gallery

Curator: Georgia Museum of Art

Sponsored in part by Nat & Ann Dellavalle

As the chaos of the Vietnam War dominated American news, a shadow war was being fought in neighboring Laos. Since the 1950s, the United States had been involved in Laos, where communism had begun to take hold, with forces backed by North Vietnam. In the early 1960s, CIA officers allied with the Hmong who were already fighting communist forces. The Hmong, a unique tribal group originally from China, amassed a guerilla force which grew to more than 30,000 fighters backed by the CIA. The Hmong fought for their land and their livelihood, but the goal of the CIA was destroying communist supply lines between Laos and Vietnam and tying down North Vietnamese forces. Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos—more than were dropped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Yet this was known as the “Secret War.” It was an entirely covert paramilitary operation that was unknown to the American general public. This CIA operation is the largest clandestine operation in the agency’s history. The U.S. pulled out of Laos in 1973, leaving tens of thousands of Hmong to flee to neighboring Thailand, to later emigrate to Germany, France, and the United States.

John Willheim was already an established photographer when he joined the CIA. He was especially chosen to enter and document the Secret War. His photographs were classified for decades, seen only by top American intelligence officials and the President. His images show the everyday life of the Hmong people and their landscape, as well as the brutality of war. One of the most featured figures is a young General Vang Pao (1929-2011), the venerated leader of the Hmong forces. Now that these powerful images are unclassified, this exhibition marks their first public viewing. A resident of Southern California, Willheim chose Fresno, with its large Hmong community with strong ties to the Secret War, as the ideal place to unveil these images.

Lobby and Concourse Galleries

Curator: FAM Curator Sarah Vargas

Trading cards are works of art—drawings, photographs, and colorized photographs—with a commercial purpose. Soon after bubble gum was invented in 1928, Warren Bowman’s Gum, Inc. dominated the market with its “Blony” brand bubble gum. For decades before, cigarette and candy companies had included trading cards with their products. In the 1930s, Gum, Inc. began slipping a trading card in every penny Blony wrapper. With authentic samples from all 49 trading card sets produced by the Bowman companies, this exhibition explores American culture and art reflected in the cards as influenced by the Great Depression, the gangster era, the international conflicts preceding World War II, the Korean War, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the evolution from radio to television. This exhibit also illustrates the improvements in the artwork and printing processes over Bowman’s 22-year history ending in 1955.

In early 1956, Bowman Gum was acquired by the increasingly competitive Topps Gum Company, and so ended the Bowman brand until Topps revived it in 1989. The exhibition consists of over 400 trading cards in 47 framed wall displays and a small display of related items.

The American Baseball Card Museum is a tax-exempt organization dedicated to promoting the study and appreciation of American culture, history, and art through baseball cards.

For more information on stories behind some of the Bowman Trading Cards, click here.

SEE SEPARATE PRESS RELEASE HERE.

Duncan and Hallowell Galleries

Curators: Jeff Jaech and FAM Curator Sarah Vargas

Sponsored in part by Baker Manock & Jensen PC

From the Permanent Collection, the Fresno Art Museum is proud to present June Wayne: The Dorothy Series.

In the mid-1970s, artist June Wayne (1918-2011) began a project documenting the life of her mother, Dorothy Kline. The resulting 20 lithographs use photographs, personal documents, and artifacts to create an intimate portrait of a hard-working and independent woman dealing with the challenges of the early half of the 20th century. Her experiences as an immigrant, a divorcée, a single mother, and a working woman are lovingly explored by her daughter in this visual biography. Though this project was deeply personal to Wayne, it narrates a universal story of perseverance that will resonate with many.

June Wayne was the Fresno Art Museum’s Council of 100 Distinguished Woman Artist for 1988, the year the award program started.

Moradian Gallery

Curator: FAM Curator Sarah Vargas

Sponsored in part by Kaye Bonner Cummings

Continuing from summer 2023 through June 30, 2024:

Artist and illustrator John Parra (b. 1972) wrote and illustrated an autobiographical book based on his childhood experiences working with his dad, a landscaper on California’s Central Coast. The resulting children’s book, Growing an Artist: The Story of a Landscaper and His Son was just published in 2022 by Simon & Schuster and has already received many accolades from reviewers, critics, and fans.

Growing an Artist is a simple, warm, and inspiring book about the bond that is created between father and son. It is about a father who works hard and takes pride in his work and instills that same kind of pride in his child. It is about not letting anyone take away your pride if you do something well. It is about art—the art of growing beautiful things like a lovely garden or a son, who will grow into a talented artist. It is about the bountiful rewards of hard work, whether it be pulling weeds, pruning, and mowing to turn an uninspired yard into a beautiful garden or taking a blank canvas, and with a lot of practice, study, and patience, turning it into a masterful painting.



John’s childhood self, Juanito, helps his dad in his landscaping business, although he is sometimes distracted by what he sees in the natural world and stops to draw a bird or a plant that catches his eye. His father does not seem to mind. He recognizes his son’s natural talent. He knows that it may lead to his son becoming a landscape architect like he himself dreamed of becoming—or perhaps an artist.

John’s own purpose behind this story (and every story he illustrates with his colorful, vibrant, and finely detailed acrylic illustrations) can be summed up by Juanito’s words: “I will use my art to tell the stories of hardworking, passionate people who make the world more beautiful.”

Contemporary Gallery

Exhibition Curator: Susan Yost Filgate, FAM Education Director

Support for this exhibition from the Bonner Family Foundation, the Foundation@FCOE, and Harold and Janice Nikoghosian

Winter/Spring 2024 General Exhibition Season Sponsors

Eaton and Gibson Family Fund of the Central Valley Community Foundation

David Nino

Michael and Shelly Woolf

Christy Hicks

Ellen Hirth

CCIS Insurance Services

J.P. Lamborn Co.

Evany Zirul

David and MaryAnne Esajian

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