Palmer Hayden & the Past

An exhibition highlighting painter Palmer C. Hayden’s contribution to American art opens Friday at the Museum of African American Art.

Hayden (1890-1973) was one of the most important painters of the Harlem Renaissance, according to Samella Lewis, the museum’s founder and an art historian. “Echoes of Our Past: The Narrative Artistry of Palmer C. Hayden” includes 38 paintings, most of them realistic genre scenes depicting a crusty blues singer at the piano or a robust railroad worker, for instance.

Hayden “presented ordinary people doing ordinary work with such vitality that it transcended all ethnic barriers,” says Lewis in a prepared statement.

Joyce Henderson, acting director of the museum, said recently that Hayden’s art “covers several years of thought and persuasion of American artists, including the 1920s focus on street scenes and urban life, and, moving through the Harlem Renaissance, to a period of characterizing the black American experience more particularly.”

Hayden, who grew up in Virginia, was essentially self-taught. His most prolific period occurred in the 1940s and he did not begin to depict the black experience until the late 1930s. However, he began his career during the Harlem Renaissance (1919-’29). His contemporaries included Hale Woodruff, Aaron Douglas and Meta Fuller.

“Echoes of Our Past” was guest curated by Alan M. Gordon, art department chairman at California State University, Sacramento.

The Museum of African American Art was given a 40-piece collection of Hayden’s paintings by the artist’s late wife in 1982. “Our intention back then was to organize a major exhibition of the work,” Henderson said, “but all of it had to be restored and we didn’t get the funding to do that until 1986,” when W. P. Alton Jones Foundation provided the money.

After its local stint through July 31, the Hayden exhibition is scheduled to travel to six major American cities, Henderson said.

“The presentation of this exhibition is important to us, not only because we’re showing our own collection, but also because we’re assuming the charge of making Palmer’s work and reputation known throughout the country. The pieces in our collection are probably his best.”

In conjunction with the exhibit, the museum will hold a seminar on artists of the Harlem Renaissance on May 15 from 3-5 p.m.

RECENT ACQUISITIONS: The J. Paul Getty Museum recently acquired an initial “A” from a choir book illuminated by the 15th-Century Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo. Within the letter, formed by a ferocious dragon, King David is shown praying to God. The piece will be on view April 19 through July 10 in “Illuminated Italian Manuscripts.” The museum has also acquired a late 5th-Century B.C. Attic red-figure volute krater and stand attributed to the circle of the Meidias Painter and a rare drawing, “Portrait of a Man,” by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743), the artist who definitively shaped official portraiture in France during the reign of Louis XIV.

“Trap,” a major sculpture by Nancy Graves, has been donated to the University Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach. The painted bronze and steel work is now on view in the museum’s current exhibit of permanent holdings, as is “Stephanie,” a major sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Robert Graham, on long-term loan to the museum.

The Palm Springs Desert Museum has been given Auguste Rodin’s “Glaucus,” a small-scale bronze sculpture.

GRANTS: The Municipal Art Gallery, operated by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, has received a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grant will be used to support “Art in Our City,” a program to help fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade children understand contemporary art.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will receive grants totaling $300,000 from the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities to help organize, exhibit and send on tour the first major U. S. exhibition of Hungarian avant-garde art.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: Santa Monica-based artist Jon Swihart has been chosen as one of two American artists to live and work for six months in Giverny, France, at the home of Impressionist progenitor Claude Monet.

Swihart, 33, who has never been to Europe and hasn’t traveled in the United States since he was a child, will go abroad with Santa Barbara-based artist Priscilla Bender-Shore.

The two artists are winners in the Reader’s Digest Artists at Giverny Program, funded jointly by Reader’s Digest in Pleasantville, N. Y., and its French subsidiary in Paris. They will receive $10,000 each, air fare for themselves and a companion, and will live in a newly renovated building at Giverny that contains a large studio.