ENAM opens two new exhibitions

When talking about American painter Thomas Hart Benton, Ellen Noël Art Museum Curator Daniel Zies often calls him the “Tom Lea of the Midwest.”

Many people in West Texas are well-familiar with Lea’s artwork including his much-talked about paintings from the frontlines in World War II as a war correspondent.

Like Lea, Benton, who was from Missouri, also served in the U.S. Military with war-related work also having an enduring effect on his style.

However, Benton served in the U.S. Navy during the first World War where he was directed to make drawings and illustrations of shipyard work and life.

After World War I, Benton began the naturalistic and representational work today known as regionalism.

He toured America, making sketches and ink wash drawings of the things he saw.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Benton completed seven large paintings known as the “Year in Peril” series.

That work is on display along with the other exhibition “Censorship. Controversy. And Scandal” featuring “The Fleet’s In” by Paul Cadmus at the Ellen Noël Art Museum’s temporary location at the Presidential Archives.

“One of the important things is that for him, in this area we have Tom Lea’s work in the 1930s as this PR artist,” Zies said. “Thomas is the equivalent of the Midwest and he’s well known.”

Both exhibitions will be up until May 28.

Benton’s “Year in Peril” series were published as books and posters by Abbott Laboratories — a pharmaceutical company that was producing necessary and improved drugs for the war effort.

The president of the company found a way to give back to the war effort by sponsoring artists to depict military subject matter for use by the Department of Defense public relations.

Benton created 25 artworks for Abbott Labs, showcasing what he witnessed on board the submarine USS Dorado and LSTs along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

“This is an interesting story,” Zies said. “He was commissioned from a pharmaceutical company to create these images as sort of propaganda purposes for World War II.”

The original paintings and drawings were turned over by Abbott Labs to the Navy and comprise the artwork within this exhibition.

“It’s really special that we get to have all this work from him in this collection. If you start looking at these paintings, there are a lot of detailed images like what was happening at that moment. He was in the moment doing this stuff. We have a couple examples of that.”

“Censorship, Controversy and Scandal” dives into a unique look at controversial topics and iconic art pieces which feature’s Cadmus’ “The Fleet’s In.”

“It came along because also part of the collection is a Paul Cadmus piece and it actually has a cool back story of it being censored,” Zies said. “When it first came out, it wasn’t allowed to be exhibited and it was lost and then found again. We’re going to talk about that piece but there’s other examples of scandalous and things that happened in history of censorship.”

Zies talked about how much of a privilege it is to bring in the two exhibitions.

“It’s really fascinating that we get to borrow from the Navy,” Zies said. “That’s something we don’t always get to do. One of the reasons we thought this exhibition would be good to show here is how it fits in with the presidential archives.”

Henry Adams from Case Western Reserve University was the guest speaker at last week’s opening reception.

“This is a wonderful group,” Adams said. “Thomas Hart Benton was probably the most famous American artist of the 1930s. He was the first artist featured in Time magazine. This a wonderful group of his paintings. The painting by Paul Cadmus is one of the masterpiece paintings from the 1930s and also it’s extremely interesting about what it says about censorship.”

For more information on the Ellen Noël Art Museum and the two exhibitions, go to tinyurl.com/49kpr28b.

If you go 

>> What: Thomas Hart Benton exhibition and “Censorship, Controversy, and Scandal.”

>> When: Open now-May 28.

>> Where: Presidential Archives.

>> On the net: tinyurl.com/49kpr28b