H.C. Westermann, The Reluctant Acrobat (self-portrait), 1949
The Contemporary Museum – Makiki Heights
2411 Makiki Heights Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822
Main: (808) 526-1322; Exhibition Info: 526-0232; Café Reservations: 523-3362
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release October 24, 2008
Contact: Charlie Aldinger, Director of Museum Advancement;
Ph: (808) 237-5231; Fax: (808) 536-5970; E-mail: caldinger@tcmhi.org
Web Site: http://www.tcmhi.org
Major Collection of Westermann Artwork Promised to Hawaii Museum
Exhibition Planned in December 2008
Honolulu, HI…Georgianna Lagoria, Executive Director at The Contemporary Museum (TCM) in Honolulu, has announced the promised gift of an extraordinary private collection of artwork created by renowned contemporary artist H. C. Westermann (1922-1981) by two of the art world’s most generous philanthropists and collectors, Thurston and Sharon Twigg-Smith of Honolulu, Hawaii. Both Twigg-Smiths are long term Trustees of the museum.
Their Westermann collection has been sought by several mainland U.S. museums. It comprises one painting, 16 sculptures, 13 drawings/watercolors and 34 prints valued at nearly $2 million. It spans from an early 1949 self-portrait to one of the artist’s last and most monumental works.
“Through the generosity of the Twigg-Smiths, The Contemporary Museum will have one of the most in-depth representations of Westermann’s work in a public collection,” Lagoria said. “The other is at The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, and another major public collection is at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,” she continued.
The Twigg-Smith holdings will join a set of eight Westermann prints, The Connecticut Ballroom, and the recently rediscovered early Westermann painting, Metaphysical Meaning, already in the museum’s collection, making TCM a major center for the study and appreciation of Westermann’s art. The painting was purchased last year by TCM with funds donated by the Twigg-Smiths.
“This extraordinary gift at our 20th anniversary reaffirms our commitment and long legacy of bringing the world’s best contemporary art to our remote Hawaiian islands for the benefit of our greater community and to inspire our regional artists,” said Lagoria. “Twigg and Sharon have both established the museum’s legacy and ensured its importance in the greater art world through this contribution, and the many others they have donated over the past 40 years.”
TCM will present an exhibition of a selection of these promised gifts, curated by James Jensen, Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Collections, in December 2008. At 20: The Sharon and Thurston Twigg-Smith Collection of H.C. Westermann—A Gift/Promised Gift in Honor of The Contemporary Museum’s 20th Anniversary will debut at TCM December 18, 2008 and remain on view through February 22, 2009. Jensen will lead a walk-through lecture of the exhibition on January 24 at 11 a.m. This program is free with admission.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Horace Clifford Westermann (1922-1981), known as “Cliff” to his friends, worked briefly in the Pacific Northwest logging industry and during World War II served as a gunner in the U.S. Marine Corps aboard the USS Enterprise.
He toured the Far East as an acrobat with the United Service Organization (USO) and later re-enlisted with the Marines for combat infantry service in the Korean War. In 1947, he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returning there after his Korean War service to finish his education and pursue a career as an artist.
After a brief period working in painting, Westermann gradually became known for his idiosyncratic but meticulously crafted wood sculptures (he had perfected the techniques of carpentry to support himself). Declaring his independence from the formal concerns and received cultural tradition imbued in most young artists, Westermann took his inspiration from personal experience and his own vivid imagination.
One theme, which emerged early and recurred frequently in his work, was the “death ship,” based on his witnessing kamikaze attacks and the sinking of several ships during World War II in the Pacific. In an effort to exorcise the psychological effects of war, Westermann explored the subject in numerous works, making a statement about the powerlessness of the individual in the face of destruction. This theme is reflected in a bronze sculpture and several prints in the Twigg-Smith collection, both titled Death Ship of No Port, and in the painting Metaphysical Meaning, which is a very early, if not the first, depiction by Westermann of this theme.
Westermann was also known for his formal inventiveness with found materials and could transform the commonplace into things unexpected and magical. Often he placed objects and assemblages in glass-enclosed boxes like museum specimens, creating works that are hermetic universes, inaccessible and mysterious. This aspect of his work is represented by Red Rock Canyon and U.F.O. Landing in Africa in the Twigg-Smith collection.
The ominous and threatening situations in many of Westermann’s drawings, many of which are self-portrait fantasies of the artist as a square-jawed, slicked-hair adventurer braving all manner of temptations and perils, are mitigated by the artist’s witty, cartoon-like style, as in the tropical-themed watercolor An Affair in the Islands in the Twigg-Smith collection. Frequently, Westermann used drawings to illustrate his letters to friends or the texts of other writers. At times, Westermann was more whimsical, expressing a key sense of humor and irony, as in the Twigg-Smith collection sculpture This Great Rock was Buried Once for a Million Years, in which a fieldstone lies tethered by a chain to its base like some captive curiosity.
The Westermann promised gift marks the 20th anniversary of TCM and celebrates the remarkable growth over the past two decades of the museum’s collection, which now comprises approximately 3,000 works. When TCM opened in Makiki Heights in 1988, its collection was less than one thousand works, the majority representing artists of Hawaii. Twenty years later, while works by artists of Hawaii still comprise about 40 percent of the holdings, the collection also includes works by nationally and internationally known American artists, both established masters and emerging artists, as well as works by artists from Europe, Latin America and Asia.
For more information about Westermann promised gift, exhibition or The Contemporary Museum, visit our website at www.tcmhi.org; Exhibition Info: (808) 526-0232; Reception: (808) 526-1322.
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Photo Captions:
File Name:
H.C. Westermann (1922-1981)
The Reluctant Acrobat (self-portrait), 1949
oil on canvas
13 x 10 inches
Collection of Sharon and Thurston Twigg-Smith, promised gift to The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary
Copyright: Estate of H. C. Westermann/Licensed by VAGA, New York.
Photo Credit: Brad Goda, The Contemporary Museum
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General Information:
The Contemporary Museum - Makiki Heights
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