Garnett gallery features ‘small works by big names’ / LJWorld.com

Archive for Saturday, July 4, 2009

By Jenalea Myers - The Ottawa Herald

July 4, 2009

Ottawa — It’s a small collection of works by well-known artists.

It’s a gallery of mostly early 20th century American paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings, a place that houses work by artists such as John Steuart Curry.

It has become a staple of the Garnett community, an uncommon gallery for a small town.

“We call it a collection of small works by big names, and that’s exactly what it is,” Robert Cugno, who helps maintain the Mary Bridget McAuliffe Walker Art Collection, said.

Cugno has helped curator Robert Logan with the gallery, which has been housed in the Garnett Public Library since the late 1980s.

It was a bit of good luck that brought the Walker Art Collection to Garnett.

Maynard Walker, a prominent art dealer in New York during the 1930s and 1940s and a Garnett native, loaned and later donated a number of pieces of artwork that he owned. The gallery was established in 1951 and was named after Walker’s mother.

The collection includes pieces by artists Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Edouard Manet and Walt Kuhn.

Walker loaned the artwork after receiving a letter from a Garnett woman who was compiling letters of famous people from the area.

“He hoped to stimulate youth to look at art,” Cugno said.

But it’s not just youths who visit the gallery.

“We get visitors from all over,” Cugno said.

Curry’s painting “Tobacco Plant” is one of the most recognizable pieces in the gallery, Cugno said. A Kansas native, Curry painted the world famous, but controversial, murals on the second floor of the Kansas State Capitol.

“This painting is one of the most unusual Curry ever did because it is so peaceful and does not contain the turmoil of most of Curry’s work,” Walker said of the “Tobacco Plant.”

It was by chance that Cugno and Logan moved to Garnett from California. The Kirk House, a historical building that stands next the library, attracted the pair to the city. They saw the pieces of work that were part of the Walker Art Gallery at the library.

“I still get chills thinking about when we found the collection,” Cugno said.

But he said the works weren’t being displayed in a way that kept them preserved.

“It was an amazing collection, but it was in need of attention,” Cugno said.

And so began the campaign to restore the artwork and to find a space appropriate for the gallery. An addition to house the collection was completed in 2001.

“I prayed all along that it would happen, and it did,” Cugno said.

In addition to the gallery, the library also houses the Garnett City Art Collection.

The original collection was 90 works of art donated by a benefactor over a period of five years. The collection contains works by California regional artists from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Cugno said.

“It’s very contemporary,” he said of the collection.

The Local Artists Gallery, also a part of the library, is a collection of artwork created by local artists. An occasional traveling exhibit also might be displayed. Those works are rotated on a monthly basis, Cugno said.

“The collections here just aren’t something that you find in rural communities,” he said.