Release Date: March 29, 2006

MONMOUTH, Ill. — Some seldom-seen paintings and sketches by renowned local artist Len G. Everett are the centerpiece of an eclectic exhibit showcasing Monmouth College’s permanent art collection, currently on display in the gallery that bears the artist’s name.

Other treasures in the exhibit include a sketch by the 19th-century master James Abbott McNeill Whistler, a pristine portrait from the Renaissance and a remarkable Mayan bowl, dated 600-900 C.E.

Located on the second floor of Hewes Library, the Len G. Everett Gallery consists of two separate rooms – Gallery 204, featuring exhibits by contemporary artists; and Gallery 203, which is devoted to rotating displays from the permanent collection. Additional displays are located in the library’s first- and second-floor lobbies.

According to Mary E. Phillips, curator of college art collections, the exhibit titled “Private Works of Len G. Everett” features drawings, paintings and sketchbooks by the acclaimed Burlington, Iowa, native. After Everett’s death in 1984, his estate provided funds for the support of the arts at Monmouth College.

Phillips says this latest exhibit of Everett’s works, featuring some of his work which has seldom been on display at the college, includes “several deft self-portraits in pastel, charcoal and oil, as well as some glimpses from four of his personal sketchbooks, highlighting landscapes from his travels.” Some other Everett-related pieces on display include a photograph of the artist in his studio in New York, and an oil painting and a graphite sketch, both titled “Tin and Pewter Study.”

Born in 1925, Everett attended elementary and secondary schools in Kirkwood, Ill. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he received BFA and MFA degrees from the State University of Iowa in 1950 and 1952, respectively. He studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League under Robert Brackman, Joseph Hirsch and Robert Hale, and maintained professional art studios in Carnegie Hall and on Union Square in New York where he also taught privately.

In the early 1970s, Everett developed a distinct style of painting in which he depicted commonplace objects such as paper bags, wrinkled wrapping paper and draped fabric in conjunction with fruit, vegetables and common household items like tea kettles and pans. He arranged these forms so the image appeared to be viewed from above.

Everett won the Saltus Gold Medal from the National Academy in 1983 and died in 1984, just as his work was attracting the attention of the art world.

In addition to the works by Everett, Phillips has also arranged a display of some rare pieces of art from the college’s Carnegie Print Collection. The new display includes drawings and etchings by a collection of notable artists, including Whistler, Millet and Tiepolo. “There is an exquisite Domenico Tiepolo, ‘Flight into Egypt’,” says Phillips of the new exhibit, “and two James Abbott McNeil Whistlers--the portrait, ‘Drouet,’ and the genre scene, ‘Smith’s Yard.’ Both are superb examples of his mastery of line.”

Phillips has also put together another display from the college’s James Christie Shields Collection of Art and Antiquities. New among them is “an impressive artifact – a lovely Mayan bowl, dating from between 600 and 900 C.E.” The bowl, along with other pre-Columbian works from the Shields collection, is on display in the lobby of Hewes Library.

Four years ago, Shields, a 1949 MC graduate, gave to the college the art collection he had been developing for decades. With more than 600 objects from Egypt, the Mediterranean, the Near East, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, as well as Africa and pre-Columbian America, the Shields Collection presents significant study opportunities to the Monmouth community.

Prominently featured on the second-floor lobby of the library is an exhibit from the Shields Collection titled “Renaissance, Baroque and 19th Century Portraits.” Featuring five portraits, all of male subjects, it visually demonstrates the development of European portraiture over three centuries.

“You can see from the diverse portraits how faces were depicted in history,” says Phillips. “You can also see quite clearly various rendering techniques. For the observer, these portraits from our collection show a nice range in portrait painting.”

The galleries in Hewes Library are open during regular library hours: Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to midnight; Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, noon to midnight. Phillips says private and public viewings of the college’s permanent art collection can be made by special request through the library.

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