Since it's opening in 1998, The Mennello Museum of American Art has hosted exhibits in all genres from painting and drawings to sculpture and mixed media for visitors to enjoy. Such exhibits from the past few seasons have been:

Eight from Florida

An installation of works from the collection of The Mennello Museum of American Art, the collection of The City of Orlando, and works on loan from other private and public collections will be on view at The Mennello Museum of American Art on October 14, 2011. Eight from Florida will feature the works of Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Jose Bedia, Margaret Tolbert, Sandy Winters, Dan Gunderson, Leslie Neuman, and John Chamberlain. The artists represented in the exhibition have all created bodies of work while living in the state.

The Mennello Museum of American Art is excited to present large scale sculptures and interactive multi-media installations in this exhibit, inviting visitors to interact and experience the works in multiple ways.

Included will be artists Sandy Winters and Margaret Tolbert who are collaborating on a multi-media installation that will incorporate drawings, paintings, light projections, sculptural objects, sounds and motion. The images will explore Sandy Winters' very personal world where the natural and the man-made live in an uneasy alliance. Margaret Tolbert will take the museum visitor through the Florida aquifer and into the many springs that dot the state's landscape.

Dan Gunderson, known to many as a ceramic sculptor, has a new body of work which was greatly influenced by his young son. "Toys Are Us" is a ten foot high sculpture created from hundreds of children's toys and action figures such as Spider Man, Superman, and Kung Fu Panda. The figures are stacked, arranged, and attached to a metal armature and are somewhat reminiscent of the works created in the mid-60s when artists including Robert Rauschenberg and John Chamberlain were using "non-traditional" (found objects), to create new art forms.

1934: A NEW DEAL FOR ARTISTS

Faced with tough economic times during the 1930s, American artists celebrated our nation's drive and determination. This exhibition recognizes the seventy-fifth anniversary of the federal Public Works of Art Project. Lasting only six months, from mid-December 1933 to June 1934, the New Deal program employed artists during the Great Depression and encouraged them to depict the American Scene. Drawing on the American Art Museum/s unparalleled collection of paintings, this exhibition highlights fifty-six works ranging from portraits and city scenes to landscapes and images of rural life. Created by artists from across the United States, the paintings are a lasting record of America at a specific time and embody the countries hope for a brighter future.

1934: A New Deal for Artists is organized and circulated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with support from the William R, Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund and the Smithsonian Council for American Art. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum's traveling exhibition program "Treasures to Go".

AUSPICIOUS VISION:
EDWARD WALES ROOT AND AMERICAN MODERNISM

The exhibition Auspicious Vision: Edward Wales Root and American Modernism features drawings and paintings from Edward Wales Root’s personal collection of American art from the early to mid-twentieth century. During this time, European art was more highly regarded than American art. Root was interested in European modern art, but felt it was
his “duty” to collect works by American artists, some of whom were destitute. Root felt a responsibility to collect their work to support their artistic practice. Root didn’t buy just any art though; he was selective and had an eye for identifying emerging talent. He did not collect art as a financial investment; he collected art that moved him. Root was not only a collector, but an advocate and visionary.

More than 227 paintings and works on paper in the collection provide a valuable record of the artist who emerged during the "American Century". The works were created from 1896-97 to circa 1955 and were donated to the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in 1957. They provide a visual record of how radically the artist's vision was altered as a response to the many changes that were taking place in society. Drawn from the collection of Edward Wales Root, the exhibit will feature paintings created by Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove and Jackson Pollock. This traveling exhibit was organized by the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, Utica, NewYork.

The national tour sponsor for the exhibition is the MetLife Foundation. The Henry Luce Foundation provided funding for the conservation of artworks in the exhibition. Funding for the presentation of this exhibition at the Mennello Museum of American Art has been provided by the Arts and Cultural Affairs Office of Orange Country, Florida, the Darden Foundation and the Friends of the Mennello Museum of American Art.

The painting above: Jackson Pollock, "Number 34", 1948
(c) 2009 The Pollock Krasner Foundation /Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

REGIONAL DIALECT: AMERICAN SCENE PAINTINGS FROM THE JOHN AND SUSAN HORSEMAN COLLECTION
The collection captures a broad expanse of the American experience during the first half of the twentieth century-from the prosperous first decade, to the First World War, to the devastation of the Great Depression, and World War II. Recently featured in American Art Review the exhibition will bring America's talented but sometimes neglected artists of the early twentieth century to a greater level of appreciation.

THE TREASURES OF ULYSSES DAVIS
SCULPTURE FROM A SAVANNAH BARBERSHOP
In the early 1950s, Ulysses Davis (1914 - 1990) began barbering in a shop he built behind his home in Savannah. During his lifetime, he carved more than three hundred works, producing a varied, but unified body of wood sculpture that reflects his deep faith, humor, and dignity. The work can be divided into several major categories: religious images, patriotism, works influenced by African forms, abstract decorative objects and portraits of African and American leaders to include his masterwork, a group of forty carved busts of all the U.S. presidents through George H.W. Bush.

A TREASURY OF AMERICAN PRINTS
Springing from the early twentieth century movement in American art away from traditional, European styles of representation, A Treasury of American Prints represents the new artistic expression of America at the dawn of a new century. Organized by Blair-Murrah Exhibitions.

Peter Hurd, The Shepherdsʼ Christmas, n.d., etching.

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