The Fresno Art Museum opens its WINTER/SPRING EXHIBITION SERIES with four new exhibitions on Saturday, February 11, 2023. An exhibition reception and artist/curator talks will be held on Friday, February 10, 2023 from 5 to 8 pm. Go to fresnoartmuseum.org for more information. A lecture by Arthur Dyson will be held on February 11, 2023 at 4 pm.

Nathan Oliveira (1928-2010) was a member of the “Bridge Generation” of the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative Movement during the 1950s and onward into the 1960s joining “First Generation” artists that included David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, Wayne Thiebaud, and James Weeks. In this first and only museum exhibition since his death in 2010, Nathan Oliveira: Rare Works From the Private Collections of His Children is an original exhibition of the Fresno Art Museum.

It was Nathan Oliveira’s process to bequeath his artwork to his children on an annual basis as their inheritance. This exhibition shares and assembles for the very first time these gifts by Oliveira to his three children: Joe, Lisa, and Gina. The exhibited works were chosen during studio visits to the homes of Joe Oliveira and Lisa Oliveira Lamoure, where Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator,  was given carte blanche to select (with their guidance) from pieces given to them by their father, an indescribable experience for any curator.

Nathan Oliveira was born in 1928 in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions, in addition to having been included in hundreds of group exhibitions in important museums and galleries worldwide. Beginning in the early 1950s, he taught studio art for several decades at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in Oakland.  After serving as a visiting artist at several universities, he became a professor of studio art at Stanford University.

Internationally-known sculptor Bruce Beasley (b.1939) expresses new directions in his work with this solo exhibition of eight collages and one monumental sculpture. His major bronze, BREAKOUT III (1991), graces the entrance to the Fresno Art Museum. This 2023 exhibition expands our appreciation of Oakland, California-based artist Bruce Beasley’s illustrious and long career.

Juxtaposed with the two-dimensional massive collages is a new sculpture that mirrors the lyrical quality of the wall pieces, Aeolis 10, created in 2020. This large cast bronze piece has not been exhibited before and completes the artist’s “dance of gesture” in the gallery space.

His work is held in many major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; the Kunsthalle Mannheim in Germany; the National Art Museum of China in Beijing; the Seattle Art Museum; the János Xántus Museum, Győr, Hungary; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Oakland Museum of California, the Palm Springs Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, the Crocker Art Museum, and the Fresno Art Museum in California, among others.

This retrospective exhibition of Fresno-based architect Arthur Dyson (b. 1940) explores fifty-six years of this visionary architect’s work with models and two-dimensional renderings of his private and public edifices. His last exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum was Poetics of Space in 2004.

Born in 1940, Dyson realized his affection for architecture was not based on what he saw around him but on what was missing—interesting forms built from unusual materials and, most importantly, a lyrical and organic sense of life in new structures. In the 1960s, houses and public buildings were typically boxes or rectangles built of stainless steel with lots of glass;

As he began to establish himself, this then-young architect created new structures and also remodeled existing ones in what would become his signature organic style. His structures moved earth into mounds, cast concrete into fluid walls, and were lit by Plexiglas bubbles where sunlight enlivened his interior spaces. He used wood as a decorative element on his facades, allowing it to be geometric by bending it to activate a building’s visual presence.

Exhibition sponsors: Ed and Jan Darden, Ellen Hirth

The Fresno Art Museum is proud to present the visually dynamic and vibrant work of illustrator Raúl Colón from the book Light for All written by Cuban American author Margarita Engle. Published in December 2021, this children’s book is described as a lyrical and unifying picture book that “will inspire young readers” and “magnificently showcases the immigrant experience” in America (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). 

Raúl Colón’s images capture the immigrant experience and shed light on the many reasons why people come to our shores and the numerous contributions they make and have made to the fabric of our nation. His illustrations depict their hopes and dreams, their diversity and the commonalities, and the importance of acceptance and equity for all. The pictures help tell the story by emphasizing that America has been built by a variety of cultures and talents which have all contributed to making it a nation to be desired, to be a part of, and to create a future in. Not always a pretty history, it is our history and is a history we must learn from in order to move forward into the future. Ours is a country in which light should be shared by ALL who call the United States home no matter where they come from or what they look like. 

The illustrator Raúl Colón was born in New York City and grew up and went to art school in Puerto Rico. At one time, he aspired to be a rock star, but to his mother’s delight, he chose to be an illustrator instead. In addition to illustrating over 30 children’s books, he has designed puppets, animated films, and created illustrations for The New York Times, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. He has illustrated numerous award-winning children’s books including several Pura Belpré award-winning books (one of which was for the book Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes by Juan Felipe Herrera, one of the featured books included in the 2016/2017 exhibition at FAM, Art of the Word 2.) Colón now works and lives with his family just outside of New York City in Rockland County, New York. 

The author of Light for All, Margarita Engle, was born and raised in Los Angeles, California but spent many summers in her mother’s hometown of Trinidad, Cuba where she bonded with both her extended family and the culture of Cuba. Like Mr. Colón, she has won many awards for her writing (including a Pura Belpré award for Drum Dream Girl illustrated by Rafael López who was the featured illustrator in the 2021/2022 FAM exhibition Celebrating Differences.) On her website (margaritaengle.com), she says, “I love to write about young people who made hopeful choices in situations that seemed hopeless. My own hope is that tales of courage and compassion will ring true for youthful readers as they make their own difficult decisions in modern times.” Ms. Engle works and lives in Fresno, California with her family. 

Carole Anderson

Diane Hanson-Barnes

Robert McParland

David and MaryAnne Esajian