Our President's Message
Welcome to the 105th Annual Exhibition of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club. After 105 years, it is appropriate to reflect upon achievements of those whose work has been shown in our club's earlier exhibitions, artists who have now taken a place in the annals of art history and are represented in great museum collections. They have paved the way for the current exhibitors who have been accepted into this very competitive exhibition.
To cite only a few: Of our former presidents, Sara Metzner Boal, known for her sumi ink paintings, forged the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club's special connection with the Metropolitan Museum of Art by inaugurating the tradition of donating the proceeds from the opening Benetit Reception to the American Wing's Travel & Research Fund. Sally Swan Carr designed the Anna Hyatt Huntington Bronze Medal awarded at this exhibition. It is also in the collection of the American Numismatic Society. Charlotte Dunwiddie, sculptor and Academician of the National Academy, has work in many distinguished collections.
Other member sculptors are noteworthy for the importance of the commissions they were awarded. Katherine Thayer Hobson has work in public places in Germany and an eight foot war memorial at St. James Episcopal Church in New York City. Some of Elisabeth Gordon Chandler's nature based work is at the Storm King Art Center, and her bronze of James Forrestal is on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. Brenda Putman, known for fountains and sun dials, was commissioned by Congress to do a piece for the 1939 World's Fair. A gallery at the Boston Museum of Science is named in honor of Katharine Lane Weems, a noted sculptor of animals. Harriet Frishmuth, renowned for her lyrical bronze figures, studied with Rodin and Gutzon Borglum. Syracuse University established a study center with her casts, sketches and memorabilia. Malvina Hoffman, also a student of Rodin and Borglum, carried out a hundred piece commission for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Anna Hyatt Huntington, creator of the Horse's Head award given at our Members' Exhibit, was the founder of the famed Brookgreen Sculpture Gardens in South Carolina.
Our member painters have also made significant contributions to American art, and many are represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major collections: Priscilla Roberts' oil paintings are magically realistic; Margery Ryerson studied with Robert Henri and is famous for her oil portraits of children; Molly Guion specialized in portraits of British royalty and American Governors; Ethel Paxson, an American Impressionist, painted the Brazilian countryside; Eleanor Gay Lee, a past president, has work in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York.
Contemporary members also lead the way. Glenna Goodacre sculpted the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, D.C. Diana Kan, an internationally recognized Chinese watercolor painter, has work in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Carey Boone Nelson, a past president and active board member, is a sculptor with work in museums and collections all over the world...even in Antarctica.
The art made by women accepted into this 105th Annual Exhibition is that of women artists striving to achieve high standards of excellence and craftsmanship. They are walking in the footsteps of those earlier women who set the stage and established a model for all women artists to emulate.
