Museum News

Morris Museum of Art Announces Major Acquisition

The Morris Museum of Art has completed an agreement to acquire nearly 1,000 works of art from noted Washington D.C. collector Julia J. (Judy) Norrell, it has been announced by William S. Morris III, the museum's founder and chairman of the board.

The significant acquisition includes paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, sculpture, and folk art object and encompasses the portion of Ms. Norrell's collection related to the South. Among the highlights of the collection are important works by such photographers as Eudora Welty, Henry-Cartier Bresson, Walker Evans, and Ben Shahn; as well as paintings by William Tolliver and Eldridge Bagley. Major works by such leading African American artists as John Biggers, Beverly Buchanan, Jonathan Green, Juan Logan, and Whitfield Lovell are included. The visionary and self-taught category includes works by Howard Finster, Clementine Hunter, Mose Tolliver, and Minnie Adkins, to cite just a few. Several well-known artists, such as William Christenberry, are represented by many works in a number of different mediums.

"We are extremely pleased that the Morris Museum of Art will be home to these important Southern works," Mr. Morris said. "Many of the currents that run through the Norrell collection perfectly complement the Southern focus of the Morris, and the strengths of her collection—particularly in photography and contemporary art—will greatly enhance the existing strengths of the museum's Southern collections."

Ms. Norrell said that she is "very pleased that these objects I've come to love so much will have a compatible home at the Morris Museum of Art," and added that she looks forward to a "long and lively collaboration with the Morris family, Morris Museum director Kevin Grogan, and curator Jay Williams, working toward common goals and motivated by our common interest in and love for the art of the South."

Ms. Norrell's collection has been featured in major exhibitions, including Spirits of the South, organized by the Phillips Collection in 1999; Myth, Memory, and Imagination, organized and circulated by the McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina beginning in 2000; and Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art—Selections from the Julia J. Norrell Collection, organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and currently on national tour.