Baker Museum to host Art After Hours on Dec. 18; (free art!)

Frederick J. Whiteman
Four Figure Abstraction, 1934
Oil on canvas
Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum. 2000.15.257. Museum purchase.

Christmas bonus! Because the last Wednesday of the month falls on Christmas day this year, the Baker Museum's "Art After Hours" will be held on Wednesday, Dec. 18.

And I get to attend this month! I never get tired of free art - even though I've seen everything there twice now. Free art is cool.

The Baker Museum will be open - for free - to the public from 6-9 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 18. There will be a band and refreshments available from Cafe Intermezzo (congratulations Jeremy B., who named the cafe).

Please take this opportunity to view the Hanneke Beaumont sculptures. Those really are the star of the fall season. Sculpture speaks to people in different ways - but I love the cool gaze on her figures.

If you get a chance, wander through the third floor as well. The modern pieces from the Ahmet Ertegün collection (and some from vaults) offers an interesting perspective on a period in American art. Go left after you get up the stairs, then cross the staircase and go into right-most galleries. Finish at the end of the Chihuly tunnel and what I call the "sexy room," with works that are more figurative and less abstract.

If you take the exhibit as a whole, you can see modern art moving slowly from frenzied to something more controlled; the artists harness their anger and power. Walking through the rooms, taking in the works, I get the sense of a kind of breaking free of bounds - or maybe finding an opening out of oppression. I'm not an art critic - but that's what I get out of the show.

Albert Swinden
Untitled, 1937
Oil on board
Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum. 2000.15.278. Museum purchase.