The
City of Orlando, Florida owns and maintains the Mennello Museum of
American Art. This is a unique art museum, in a city most people
don't associate with the visual arts or traditional culture.
The
museum is new, established within what used to be an opulent private
residence in 1998. Now, it is a member of the American Association of
Museums, and its exhibits have been reviewed favorably in the New
York Times.
Most
of the museum is devoted to the artwork of Earl Cunningham, a Florida
resident who died in 1977. Cunningham is regarded as a "primitive"
painter, which means only that he wasn't taught to paint in an
academic tradition. The appellation is not at all reflective of any
lack of formal skill on the part of Cunningham. His work consists of
serene, surreal, yet coolly unaffected land and seascapes, depicting
the swampy, sunny Florida in which he lived and worked. The artists
palette and painting style are reminiscent of Gauguin and Matisse,
with their flat colors and weird mysticism. The museum owns 50
paintings by Cunningham, out of the approximately 400 paintings that
he completed. The Cunningham exhibition eventually traveled to the
American Folk Art Museum in New York, where it was praised by the New
York Times. Now, visitors can see those same canvases on permanent
display at the Mennello Museum.
From
the work of Earl Cunningham, the Mennello Museum has branched out to
other exhibitions of American folk art. For example, the Museum owns
a wooden Adam & Eve sculpture by Edgar Tolson, and the creations
of traditional Native American artists like Delbert Buck.
