For four weeks only beginning June 24, 2004, through July 21, 2004, the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette will be offering special discounted prices for the remainder of the exhibition, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures.
Discounted prices are as follows: Adults $5, Senior Citizens $4, Students (5-17) $3, Adult Groups of 20 or more $4, Student Groups of 20 or more $2.
This exhibition features 70 paintings, watercolors, and drawings in which the artist illuminates key moments of his intensive study of a single model - neighbor Helga Testorf.
Helga is presented clothed and nude, indoors and out-of-doors, and in all seasons and times of the day. The story behind how Wyeth created the Helga Pictures for over a decade from 1971-1985 -- hiding them from everyone around him, captured the country's imagination when they were first made public in 1986.
The Helga pictures were first shown in Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery in 1987. A total of 558,443 people attended the 127-day exhibition. Other major city exhibitions have included Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit.
In addition to the Wyeth exhibit, Francis Pavy’s Louisiana features more than 50 paintings in an inaugural exhibition that opened April 22 at the new University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Francis X. Pavy was born in Lafayette in 1954. As a child, Francis studied painting under Elemore Morgan, Jr., and as a teenager he studied photography, music, leather and bead work, and continued to paint and draw.
Real Peoples: Selections from the Sylvia and Warren Lowe Collection, is also on display currently. It presents recent additions to the museum’s collection of southern self-taught artists, sometimes referred to as “outsider” art. These figurative images were created by artists who are self-taught, independent, and isolated from the contemporary art world, and were given to the museum by internationally recognized collectors Sylvia and Warren Lowe of Lafayette. The exhibition showcases the richness and vitality of an image-making tradition unparalleled in other regions of this country.
A final exhibit featuring three large scale, steel sculptures by nationally recognized Louisiana artist, Martin Payton, have been installed in the museum's sculpture garden where they will remain on view through August 21, 2004. Payton’s totemic sculptures explore themes of abstraction, West African inspired mythology and the influence of African-American jazz musicians. He begins with recycled industrial materials including steel girders, chains, and springs and restores to welded sculpture the human presence. The themes of transformation, human survival, and cultural and spiritual resilience are of primary importance in Payton’s work
The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Sunday, Monday and major federal and state holidays. Special Admission prices are Adult $5, Senior Citizens $4, Students (5-17) $3, Adult Groups of 20 or more $4, Student Groups of 20 or more $2. University Art Museum Members - Free with current Membership Card; UL Lafayette Faculty, Staff and Students - Free with current I.D. For more information please call 482-2ART or visit: www.louisiana.edu/uam