The South Arkansas Arts Center is preparing to welcome the work of famed Ocean Springs, Mississippi, artist Walter Inglis Anderson as part of a traveling exhibition entitled “The South’s Most Elusive Artist.” Through the efforts of a dedicated planning committee, the exhibition will be on display in the galleries at SAAC May 16-July 30, with a public reception on the evening of May 16. The galleries are open to the public, always free of charge, Monday-Friday, 9 am-5 pm.
The special event planning committee includes current Visual Arts Committee chair Katherine McDonald, former executive director Beth Burns, current board member Paul Burns, former board president Gay Bechtelheimer, executive director Laura Allen, and assistant executive director John Lowery. Anderson’s work is well known in El Dorado, having been highly sought after by arts patrons over the years and even exhibited at SAAC before. The announcement of “The South’s Most Elusive Artist,” however, offered an exciting opportunity to introduce a new generation to this enigmatic artist and exhibit work that has never before left Mississippi.
“I was taken by Anderson’s work the first time I saw it, as a teenager,” says Bechtelheimer. “And over the years I have been fortunate enough to work directly with collectors of his work and members of Anderson’s family, as well as to take groups to the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs. When we discovered the previously unseen exhibition was available this year, this group knew it was a chance we could not miss.”
The exhibition is organized by the Walter Anderson Museum of Art (WAMA) and draws from WAMA’s Permanent Collection and that of the Estate of Walter Anderson. The exhibition includes rarely seen watercolors, block prints, ceramics, and sketches alongside some of Anderson’s most recognizable and iconic works.
“Walter Anderson was a wholly unique and prodigious creator who does not fit neatly into any one category of art,” said Julian Rankin, Executive Director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. “He was as talented in watercolor as he was in print making, as deft an illustrator as he was a muralist.”
Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965) was born in New Orleans, LA but spent the majority of his life in the small seaside town of Ocean Springs. He was classically trained as an artist at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before returning to the Gulf Coast. Anderson’s artwork did not receive much acclaim his lifetime, with notable exceptions of exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery in Memphis, TN. Often shunning the spotlight, the intrepid artist preferred the solitude of nature – especially that found on Horn Island, a barrier island located twelve miles offshore of Ocean Springs. Today, Walter Anderson is recognized as one of the seminal figures of Southeastern American art. In 2003, a retrospective of Anderson’s work was shown at the Smithsonian Institution and more than a dozen volumes of story and scholarship have been published in the years following his death by the University Press of Mississippi.
To see this exhibition in person, visit SAAC at 110 East Fifth Street, El Dorado, Arkansas beginning May 16. For more information on “The South’s Most Elusive Artist” or to schedule a school group or special tour, please call SAAC at 870-862-5474.
The South Arkansas Arts Center’s special event planning committee met to plan for the arrival and installation of the traveling exhibition featuring work of famed Ocean Springs, Mississippi, artist Walter Inglis Anderson entitled “The South’s Most Elusive Artist” scheduled to open at SAAC on May 16. L to R: John Lowery, Katherine McDonald, Gay Bechtelheimer, Beth Burns, Paul Burns, and Laura Allen.