Remembering Things Past: A Conversation Celebrating Anne Truitt

Last nights discussion at the Hirshhorn "moderated by Tim Gunn, chief creative officer at Liz Claiborne and former student of Truitt’s. Artist Martin Puryear, filmmaker Jem Cohen, photographer John Gossage, and associate curator Kristen Hileman share their unique perspectives on Truitt’s career as artist, professor, and author."

This panel was very unique in the sense that I walked away with a much better understanding of Truitt as a artist and a person. The format was a somewhat casual conversation between people who evidently had amazing experiences having Truitt in their lives. It was interesting hearing the perspectives of her past student (Tim Gunn) as well as colleagues and dear friends.

Anne Truitt @ The Hirshhorn

Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection

October 8, 2009 to January 3, 2010

The first major exhibition of Truitt’s work since 1974, "Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection" is a survey of two- and three-dimensional works made during the artist’s 50-year career. A variety of large-scale sculptures will be on view, including formative pieces from the early 1960's that suggest the architectural environment of the artist's childhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The retrospective also presents the column sculptures that became the hallmark of Truitt's profoundly focused practice. Acting as a painter as well as a sculptor, the artist wrapped color around the corners of these sculptures, creating visually poetic relationships between structure and surface. Throughout her work, she investigated proportion, scale and color, as well as perception and memory. After leaving the field of clinical psychology in the mid-1940's, Truitt began making figurative sculptures, but turned toward reduced geometric forms after seeing works by Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt in 1961. Despite affinities to the paintings of the Color Field artists often associated with Washington, D.C., and the sculpture of artists who came to be known as Minimalists, from the outset Truitt’s art was an independent exploration of abstraction and personal references. Truitt was born in Baltimore, MD, but lived in Washington for most of her adult life and has been largely under-recognized for her contribution to post-1960 art. The exhibition is organized by associate curator Kristen Hileman and will be accompanied by the first complete monograph on the artist.

Anne Truitt is organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The exhibition is made possible by the Henry Luce Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The Judith Rothschild Foundation, with additional support from the Hirshhorn Board of Trustees and the Museum’s National Benefactors.

Anne Truitt's Night Naiad, 1977, from the Hirshhorn's collection.