Closing Soon in Rochester!

This weekend is your last chance to see Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.

The seventy modernist treasures featured in this exhibition will move on to their next venue on March 25, 2001. Next stop, the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania, beginning April 22.

Helen Frankenthaler's painting Small's Paradise is among those artworks. Frankenthaler named this rhythmic painting after a celebrated New York cabaret. Also known as "Harlem's Home of Mirth and Music," Small's Paradise featured improvisational music called "gut-bucket," beautiful showgirls, dancing waiters, and Monday morning breakfast dances. Many New York artists, musicians, and writers frequented this center of Harlem nightlife.

Source: Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Helen Frankenthaler, born 1928, Small's Paradise, 1964, acrylic, 100 x 93 5/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of George L. Erion.