YOUNGSTOWN Butler to display art from Akron

The Akron Art Museum is undergoing construction.
THE VINDICATOR
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Butler Institute of American Art will display paintings from the collection of Akron Art Museum from Tuesday through Sept. 10.
This exhibition of lush landscapes and dreamy portraits of women is being displayed at the Butler while the Akron museum undergoes construction. The 20 works are some of Akron's most important turn-of-the-century paintings, and most of the artists represented in this exhibition are also featured in the Butler's renowned collection of American art from the same period.
Both museums have masterworks by painters Frederick Frieseke, John Twachtman and Willard Metcalf. Inspired by the French impressionists, these artists used flickering brushstrokes and soft colors to render the seascapes, meadows and forest glens along America's East Coast. Other artists, such as Thomas Wilmer Dewing and Charles Hawthorne, infused their images of women with a gentle golden light that expresses their romantic vision.
Opportunity
As construction on the new Akron Art Museum continues, both museums saw an opportunity to create an off-site exhibition space that would allow part of the Akron museum's collection to remain on public view.
"We were especially eager to exhibit at the Butler because our turn-of-the-century American paintings are so complementary to theirs," said Kathryn Wat, Akron's curator of exhibitions. "Visitors to the Butler can experience a wider range of images by outstanding American artists."
Louis A. Zona, director of the Butler, said, "It's so exciting to walk from the gallery with our painting of Giverny, France, by Willard Metcalf, for example, and then into the Mesaros gallery with Akron's Maytime, one of Metcalf's classic American scenes."
Founded in 1919 by steel magnate Joseph Butler, the Butler Institute was one of the nation's first museums devoted exclusively to American art. At the same time that Butler was assembling his collection, Edwin C. Shaw, a B.F. Goodrich executive and co-founder of the Akron Art Institute (now the Akron Art Museum), was purchasing works by many of the same American artists. Most of Shaw's painting collection was bequeathed to the Akron Art Museum in 1955.