The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach celebrates the work of two women artists who explored American life in the twentieth century—one distinctly internal, the other decidedly external—in “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery” and “Blazing Light: Photographs by Mimi Plumb,” on view October 31 to March 14. Though the artists’ mediums, perspectives, and places in time appear entirely dissimilar, the dialogue between the exhibitions is at full volume.
More than five dozen paintings by Abercrombie offer a glimpse into her hyper-individual surrealist perspective and internalization of the world she inhabited but never felt she fit into, from the Chicago jazz scene through the Civil Rights movement.
“These paintings are really Gertrude Abercrombie’s visual diary,” says Regina Palm, the Norton’s Harold and Anne Berkley Smith Senior Curator of Modern Art. “She found her paintings to be more real than the world around her.”
In immediate visual contrast, Plumb’s black-and-white photography blazes with truth, yet familiarity abounds. Staged in four bodies of work, the exhibition chronicles the anxieties that dominated the tail end of the Cold War and the period immediately thereafter, including the growing awareness of global warming, the AIDS epidemic, and more.
“I fell in love with [Plumb’s] ability to transport us to a place and a moment in time that is in some ways sort of timeless,” says Lauren Richman, the Norton’s William and Sarah Ross Soter Senior Curator of Photography. “Her images are psychologically charged, and I think that’s something she shares with Abercrombie. Both artists are playing with a sense of beauty and unease that are well suited and well meshed.”
During Art After Dark on October 30, enjoy an Artist Talk: A Conversation with Mimi Plumb and Gregory J. Harris. Additional programming includes A Closer Look: Danielle Vaknin on “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery” November 11; ArtSpeaks: Zachary Wirsum in Conversation with Regina Palm November 13; and Book and Art: And Then She Fell and “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery” November 14.
