Visit to Charlotte: Two Museums

Alfred ManessierDans la flamme qui consumme, 1957

My daughter and I headed to Charlotte today to check out the new Modern art museum there, the Bechtler. The museum primarily shares the family's collection of modern art pieces of some pretty notable artists such as Giacometti, Warhol, Calder and Rouault. My favorite part of my visit today at the Bechtler was for the primary motivation of the visit, to view the paintings and lithographs of Alfred Menessiar, within their current exhibition, the School of Paris at http://www.bechtler.org/School-of-paris#/introduction. I learned more about his work and life today. Not too many times have art pieces ever made me weep, but Menessiar's did. Perhaps the chord of painting to stained glass is something I have been searching for, for actually my whole adult life, and in combination with that to his spirituality which provides strong connections, the work just consumed me. I also learned about another artist in this same exhibition that also worked in stained glass, Gustave Singier.

Of course I enjoyed other works in the Bechtler collection from Sol LeWitt, to Giacometti to Warhol. It was well worth the travel on this rainy day to get to see these works.

Right next door is the Mint Museum of Art Uptown which houses fine art works on one floor and the Mint Museum of Craft and Design on another. I enjoyed getting to see some glass works and a ceramic exhibition on view from the United Kingdom.

I was pleased to see a stained glass work in their collection by Judith Schaechter, entitled Hemophilia. With so many sculptural works of glass being part of their collection, it was encouraging to see Judith's work in another museum.

The day continued to raise those questions that ever linger about art versus craft and what defines each. And it seems the more I investigate within the studio and academically, the less I am able to define these things myself. But it provides good fuel for my next paper that will explore these three artists viewed today: Menessiar, Singier, and Schaechter, as well as others.