Dudley Exhibit at

Brauer Museum of Art

Showcases the

Beauty of

the Indiana Dunes

"The Wind's in the North"

 

VALPARAISO , Ind. - A career retrospective of Frank V. Dudley, whose paintings of the Indiana Dunes helped launch a movement to preserve their natural beauty,  opened August 15 at Valparaiso University 's Brauer Museum of Art.

"The Indiana Dunes Revealed: The Art of Frank V. Dudley" features more than 70 of the artist's paintings, with a focus on his portrayals of the Indiana Dunes and Lake Michigan's southern shore, to which Dudley dedicated 40 years of his professional life promoting and preserving.

            "It is fitting that we are gathering so many of Dudley's works together at Brauer Museum, just a few miles from the sand dunes that inspired him," said Gregg Hertzlieb, director of the museum.

 

"Land of Sky and Song"

            The exhibit is the most comprehensive Dudley retrospective ever to be organized and includes works from Brauer Museum's collection as well as works loaned from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Illinois State Museum, Indiana Historical Society, Krannert Art Museum, Chicago's Union League Club, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, Indiana State Museum, Weisman Art Museum, Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, and three Northwest Indiana school corporations. The exhibit also contains works from the private collection of James R. Dabbert, a Chicago collector and senior lecturer in English at Illinois Institute of Technology.

The exhibit is scheduled in conjunction with the release of a book of the same title written and edited by Dabbert. The new book is the first comprehensive examination of the widely-collected and ecologically-significant artist, and is being published by the University of Illinois Press .

            "I can remember seeing my first Dudley painting at the Michigan City Public Library when still in grade school," Dabbert said. "It was a painting of a lone pine tree on a dune with the blue water of Lake Michigan in the background. I remember being drawn to the expanse of blue water and the horizon line."

            Dabbert said Dudley's exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918 brought national attention to the Indiana Dunes, and over the next few years his paintings of the Dunes were exhibited in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, New York City, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. Dudley's efforts, along with those of the Prairie Club of Chicago and other conservationists, resulted in Indiana establishing a state park at the Dunes in 1925 and the federal government establishing Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966.

            While many artists are associated with a particular locale, Dabbert said Dudley was unique in spending more than 40 years painting the Dunes to the near exclusion of anything else.

            "A Dudley painting is quickly understood, with a disarming directness that often evokes an emotional response, even an invitation to step into the scene, and often times a pathway seems to lead to discovery or finding something lost," Dabbert said.

            An opening reception for "The Indiana Dunes Revealed," which runs through Nov. 30, will take place from 2 to 5 p.m. Aug. 26. The reception is free and open to the public and will include remarks by Dabbert at 2:30 p.m.

Copies of "The Indiana Dunes Revealed: The Art of Frank V. Dudley" will be available for purchase and signing.

Special events planned during the exhibit include a Aug. 31 lecture by art scholar Wendy Greenhouse at 6:30 p.m. in Mueller Hall; a Sept. 6 coffee hour with Dr. Richard Brauer, a Dudley scholar and associate professor emeritus of art, at 7 p.m. in the museum; and a Sept. 20 Gallery Talk led by Gregg Hertzlieb, director of Brauer Museum, beginning at 7 p.m. in the museum.

            Brauer Museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday during the academic year. Admission to the museum and all events is free. For more information about Brauer Museum call (219) 464-5365 or visit www.valpo.edu/artmuseum. Group tours may be arranged by calling (219) 465-7926.