GenArt group gathers at Crystal Bridges
by February 17, 2012 4:12 pm 105 views
BENTONVILLE — Yes, it was past Valentine’s day, but their love of the arts continues year-round.
Members of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s GenArt membership group gathered at the museum after-hours Thursday (Feb. 16) to socialize and for a short stroll through the Colonial to Early Nineteenth-Century Art gallery.
David Houston, director of curatorial at Crystal Bridges, directed patrons to two works that he said best demonstrate love: Benjamin West’s “Cupid and Psyche” (1808) and Asher Durand’s “Kindred Spirits” (1849).
West’s piece, oil on canvas, depicts a winged cupid bent over the reclining form of Psyche. She is leaning on cupid’s knee with one arm about his neck and looking into his face. The work is erotic, but not overly so.
The theme of love was easy to ascertain in West’s work, but finding the love in “Kindred Spirits — depicting the previously deceased painter Thomas Cole and his friend poet William Cullen Bryant conversing inthe Catskill Mountains — was a little harder for GenArt patrons to swallow.
Until Houston started talking.
“Friendship is often compared to love,” he said. “It’s one of those binding things.”
“Both are chosen affections,” he added.
Then, gesturing to “Kindred Spirits,” he said “Just like love, when you look at this painting, their names are carved in this painting.” Both Cole and Bryant’s names are carved in a tree in the painting.
The GenArt group includes some 270 households — families and singles — ages 21 and up and mostly young professionals, said Catherine Kyle, membership coordinator. GenArt events are intended to give this particular group of members a chance to network and to learn about art in a social setting, she said.
Thursday’s event was sponsored by Dr. Missy Clifton, owner and founder of Premier Dermatology & Skin Renewal Center in Bentonville, and her husband, Jeff Clifton.