New Acquisitions

Doris Ulmann

Doris Ulmann was an American photographer whose work linked the Pictorialist tradition of photography that preceded her and the documentary style that emerged from the Farm Security Administration photographers that followed. Ulmann's work is important for the ways in which it combines together and departs from both genres. Although she didn't study photography formally until enrolling at the Teacher's College of Columbia University in 1914 (and later at the Clarence H. White School of Photography), she gained her first exposure to the medium studying with Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Society in New York. While studying at the White School she was exposed to the works of Gertrude Käsebier, and by extension Imogen Cunningham. Ulmann never cited Käsebier as a direct influence on her works, but the inspiration certainly resonates throughout her oeuvre. After graduating from the White school Ulmann worked in New York as a portrait photographer in until 1925, when she abandoned her job there and set out to photograph in Appalachia and South Carolina.

Although works produced by Ulmann during this period maintain an aura of authenticity, they are certainly not "documentary photographs," but elaborate tableaux directed by Ulmann and produced in collaboration with the sitter. Ulmann often instructed the individuals photographed to wear certain clothes and repositioned people's possessions to compose images that she felt recorded "a lasting memory of certain aspects of American life."

Christina Ramberg

Christina Ramberg, an influential albeit underrecognized painter and draughtsperson, maintains an crucial place in the history of art both regionally and nationally. Her innovative style synthesizes a number of diverse sources including printed advertisements, fashion layouts, costume history, and medical illustrations, to critically examine themes that include gender, power, and sexuality. Ramberg was born in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in 1946. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her BFA in 1968 and her MFA in 1973. She taught there for a number of years and was chairperson of the Painting and Drawing Department from 1985 to 1989. Debilitating illness cut Ramberg's life short and she died in 1995.

Although she refused to identify with any particular artistic group, Ramberg is often associated with a group of artists who later became known as the Chicago Imagists. Collectively their styles shared interest in the human figure, and they often used bold colors and cited elements of pop culture. While many of the central figures of this movement such as Roger Brown, Jim Nutt, Ed Pashke, and Karl Wirsum have been thoroughly examined, others such as Ramberg still remain on the peripheries even though her works are strong and important contributions to the period and merit further scholarship. Ramberg's oeuvre consists mainly of tightly-cropped figure paintings, and her particular emphasis on constrictive clothing comments on the role societal forces play in shaping the female form and the physical and psychological effects that follow. This piece, Untitled, about 1969, is representative of much of Ramberg's work in the late 60s. Emphasis on clothing and texture hint the viewer towards assuming the gender of the figure portrayed. Ramberg plays on this tension in much of her work as she reveals enough information to make the viewer reassess assumptions about gender, sexuality, identity, and ultimately power.

William Conger

Important as both an artist and educator, William Conger was born in 1937 in Dixon Illinois. He studied at the School of the Art Institute then went on to earn his BFA from the University of New Mexico Albuquerque. He continued his education at the University of Chicago, graduating with an MFA in 1966. Conger has pursued a lifelong career in the arts, as a practicing artist as well as an influential educator. After serving as chairman of DePaul's art department until 1984, he continued his teaching career at Northwestern University where he became professor and chair of the Department of Art Theory and Practice. Conger is often associated with a group of artists known as the "Allusive Abstractionists," which includes painters Miyoko Ito, Richard Loving, and Frank Piatek.

Conger's works are vivid non-representational works, which he bases on a diverse range of subjects. His kinetic compositions interweave gently flowing forms that, while based in linear abstraction, ebb and flow together in organic curvilinear compositions. This piece titled Missionary is a perfect example of his refined technique, where he meticulously layers paint to create delicate glowing compositions. Although the piece is non-representational Conger explains how the title can evoke a multiplicity of meanings, "The title of the painting has nothing to do with missionary except that I mean the title to suggest that whatever one can say about the idea of missionary one can also say about painting as an endeavor and process. Art is a form of proselytizing analogous to religious proselytizing. The semi-circle, suggestive of the Islamic crescent, is actually just a fairly uncommon shape to Western eyes and is perhaps suggestive of the foreign-ness of abstraction. Thus the subject is art and painting, not religion as such. But of course, any allusions at all are fine with me, including none."

Robert Amft

Robert Amft (b. 1916) holds an interesting place in the history of Chicago art. His works bridge the gap between two important periods of artistic production, citing elements of 1930s and 40s works, such as social realism, modernist abstraction, and Surrealism while prefiguring later works by Chicago artists such as the Imagists. Amft was born in Chicago and began his formal artistic training at the School of the Art Institute with Francis Chapin. He has maintained a life-long connection to Chicago throughout his career, leaving for a short period in the late 1940s to teach in New Orleans but then returning in 1949. While traditionally New York City has been the center of attention for mid-century American art, Chicago artists are beginning to receive proper recognition for their own unique and important artistic contributions.

Amft's interest in the figure and in a highly personalized urban landscape come together in the present work, which shows a man in profile (possibly the artist or his father) against an assortment of roofs and cupolas. Made early in the artist's career, the painting shows a surprising degree of abstraction and an absurdist tone, and shows Amft's relation to the Imagist and Hairy Who artists the museum has acquired recently (Karl Wirsum, Barbara Rossi, Gladys Nilsson) as well as to contemporary Chicago artists like Tony Fitzpatrick, also in the collection.

Sebastião Salgado

A celebrated and controversial photojournalist, Sebastião Salgado has focused his lengthy career on human rights crises around the world. Salgado was born in Brazil but fled his home country in 1969 because of his involvement in the student-led struggle against the dictatorship. He then moved to Paris where he studied economics. Salgado began taking photographs on the numerous trips he made to Africa while working for the International Coffee Organization, in London. Deciding that the images were more powerful than the economic reports he was creating, Salgado abandoned his career as an economist to pursue photojournalism fulltime. Although many of Salgado's works are in art collections, both public and private, he rejects the label of artist and refers to himself as a (photo)journalist.

The Gold Mine is from a series Salgado produced in 1986 titled "Workers: An Archeology of the Industrial Age" in which he documented manual labor worldwide. This particular image portrays workers in Serra Pelada, an open-top mine in the Amazon region of Brazil. As many as 50,000 garimpeiros, or diggers, scrape soil from the bottom of the mine, fill their sacks, and lug their loads which weigh between 65 and 130 pounds up the 1300 feet of wood and rope ladders. The workers are paid an average of twenty cents per load, which is then sifted for gold. Garimpeiros earn an annual income of approximately $2,000. Since the unemployment rate of unskilled workers in Brazil is very high there is a continual supply of labor for these types of operations.

Ron Adams

Ron Adams has had a lifelong career in the graphic arts. From a young age he studied drawing, technical illustration and commercial art at a number of schools. At 29 Adams began his professional career as an artist when took a job working at Gemini G.E.L., a prestigious graphics workshop, as an assistant printer. Adams soon achieved the title of Master Printer, and his status as such allowed him the opportunity to collaborate with a number of leading contemporary artists including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly. In 1973 Adams he left Gemini and eventually established his own press, Hand Graphics, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After thirteen years he sold the business in order to concentrate on his own work.

Blackburn is a print Adams created as a tribute to his friend and colleague, fellow printmaker Bob Blackburn (1920-2003). Adams first became aware of Blackburn's work while working at Gemini. Eventually they met and established a lasting friendship. Adams was inspired to create this homage because, as he says, there are "very few black professional lithographers" and because Blackburn was a "leader in the field." The piece also stands as a larger tribute to those who work behind the scenes to edition prints and are seldom recognized for their contributions to the final work.

Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden's work often draws its imagery from African American experience and history. The Train refers to the role of the railroads in the migration of African Americans from the South to Northern industrial cities. A unique print, it reworks an earlier painting of Bearden's, Mysteries, while capturing the effect of his well-known collages.