Robert Indiana Major Exhibition at The Farnsworth Art Museum June 2011

On Saturday, June 20, the Farnsworth Art Museum, in Rockland, will open a major exhibition entitled Robert Indiana and the Star of Hope which will run in the museum’s Morehouse Wing and Crosman Gallery through October 25. The opening of Robert Indiana and the Star of Hope will be celebrated at a Live at Night at the Farnsworth party at the museum on Friday, June 19, with a members’ only preview and reception from 6:30 to 8 p.m. followed by a free public party from 8 to 9:30 p.m.

The exhibition on renowned American artist Robert Indiana is drawn almost exclusively from his extensive holdings at his home and studio, the Star of Hope Oddfellows Lodge on the island of Vinalhaven, Maine. The show explores the vast range of Indiana’s work from the 1950s to the present, focusing on what he has done since 1978, when he moved permanently to the Star of Hope Lodge, a late nineteenth-century building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In particular, it examines the remarkable environment Indiana has created there and the role this environment has played in his work. It will include some of his best known themes – LOVE, the American dream, and his Marsden Hartley Elegy series – as well as more recent work such as the HOPE sculpture which premiered at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. It features works Indiana considers critical to his development, many shown for the first time.