Hickory Museum of Art

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Hickory Museum of Art (HMA) is an art museum in Hickory, North Carolina that holds exhibitions, events, and public educational programs based on a permanent collection of 19th through 21st century American art. The museum also features a long-term exhibition of Southern contemporary folk art, showcasing the work of self-taught artists from around the region.^[1] North Carolina's second oldest museum, Hickory Museum of Art was established in 1944 when visionary founding Director, Paul Whitener, declared, “I am going to make Hickory, North Carolina an art center.” ^[2][3] From that moment forward, the museum has left an indelible imprint on the Western Piedmont region by presenting a long history of exhibitions and programs that bring diverse groups of people together to learn about creativity. An accomplished landscape artist in his own right, Whitener fostered relationships with the National Academy of Design, which brought the very best in American art to his hometown.

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National Accreditation[]

Hickory Museum of Art first earned national accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in 1991.^[4] On in a meeting held October 6–8, 2014, The American Alliance of Museums announced that Hickory Museum of Art was one nine museums who had earned re-accreditation by the Accreditation Commission. Accredited status from the Alliance is the highest national recognition achievable by an American museum. Of the nation's estimated 35,000 museums, 1,033 are currently accredited. To earn accreditation a museum first must conduct a year of self-study, and then undergo a site visit by a two-person team of peers. The Accreditation Commission—a body of museum professionals appointed by the alliance Board—considers the self-study and site visit report to determine whether a museum should receive accreditation.^[5]

History[]

In the early 1940s, Hickory was a leading cultural center for a city of its size (about 15,000 inhabitants). As such, Paul Whitener felt the city needed a visual arts center. With the moral support of his wife Mickey, and funding from local industrialist A. Alex Shuford Jr., Whitener organized an art association in Hickory. A group of “conscientious citizens”, as Paul referred to them, assembled in September 1943 to discuss the possibility of organizing an art association in Hickory. By November of that year, though it did not yet have either a collection or a physical location, the Hickory Museum of Art Association borrowed some local art and held its first exhibition in the vacant Bradshaw office building in downtown Hickory, drawing about 600 viewers during the relatively brief run. In February 1944, still without either a building or a collection of its own, HMA held a celebratory ceremony in the ballroom of the Old Hickory Hotel where the museum was publicly recognized and chartered by North Carolina Governor Clyde Hoey. This was the official beginning of the second oldest art museum in North Carolina.^[6] (Charlotte's 1936 Mint Museum was the first.) Hickory Museum of Art was formally dedicated four months later, and Paul Whitener unanimously appointed Director.

Location[]

Within a year of its founding, Hickory Museum of Art acquired a dozen paintings, had outgrown the Bradshaw Building, and moved into the white clapboard W.W. Bryan house on Third Avenue in Hickory, North Carolina. This was the Museum's home for the next 14 years. In 1960, HMA moved into its third home, the former office building of Shuford Mills on the corner of 3rd Street and 1st Avenue NW in downtown Hickory. “I thought it was heaven when I moved into that third location” remembered Mickey in 1994. “It was warm in the winter, cool in the summer and gorgeous year ‘round.” Here, HMA was able to further develop its programs including art classes that had already been initiated modestly before the move. The museum was also able to expand the continuing annual School Art Show, an early project of Paul's.

By the early 1980s, the museum again was in need of still-larger quarters, and to that end raised $650,000 towards building its own free-standing space. At that same time, the Hickory School Board announced that it intended to demolish the former Claremont High School building (by then renamed Hickory High School). Instead, Buck Shuford, part of the Shuford family whose members were strong supporters of Hickory Museum of Art since its beginnings, led a group of other civic-minded Hickory men and women to turn the building into the arts center it is today by spearheading a drive to raise 2.6 million dollars towards its renovation. In 1984, plans and funds were drawn to renovate Hickory's old Claremont High School. Two years later, The Arts & Science Center of Catawba Valley opened in the renovated building and provided a permanent location for the museum.^[4] Today, it has been incorporated into the SALT Block, a cultural arts complex that houses the Catawba Science Center, Hickory Choral Society, Hickory Museum of Art, Patrick Beaver Library, United Arts Council, and Western Piedmont Symphony.^[7]

Permanent Collection[]

Local industrialist A. Alex Shuford Jr. said to Paul Whitener, “If you're going to have a museum, you've got to have paintings.” Shuford then volunteered the funds for that first purchase in March 1944, and Paul wrote the check. (The 2018 relative purchase value of 1944's $140 would be approximately $1,880.) It was established with the purchase of a painting, Burke Mountain, Vermont, by National Academy of Design officer Frederick Ballard Williams, and grew rapidly over the following years. Paul and his artistic contacts in New York City, chief among them the painters Wilford S. Conrow and Henry Hobart Nichols, concentrated on American art that at the time was not favored by collectors and thus was affordable. This was also consistent with Paul's vision which, in his own words, was to first and foremost "embrace all the arts and crafts of the upper Piedmont region of North Carolina." A number of New York artists, like Whitener's friend and mentor Wilford S. Conrow, spent summers in the mountains of North Carolina, took interest in the small southern art museum, and donated work of their own. In 1954, the museum acquired a group of important works from the collection of National Academy of Design president Hobart Nichols, including pieces by Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, John Frederick Kensett, Worthington Whittredge, Edward Henry Potthast, and Robert Lewis Reid.^[2]

Today, the museum's permanent collection includes approximately 1,500 art objects, ranging from Hudson River School paintings, American art pottery, Glass Art, High-Speed Photography, and the work of regional artists.^[8] More regionally respective, the museum also recognizes the folk artistic traditions (also known as "Outsider Art"^[9]) of the Southern United States, North Carolina, and even Hickory's Catawba Valley region in a long-term folk art exhibition to which the third floor of the building is dedicated. In 2004, the museum acquired more than 150 contemporary Southern folk art objects from the collection of Hickory residents Allen and Barry Huffman.^[10] It was the largest collection to be received by the museum since the institution's establishment, and has grown remarkably in the years since. The artists represented are typically self-taught, removed from the mainstream art world, and represent a facet of art integral to the region's history. Artists include James Harold Jennings, Richard Burnside, Miles Carpenter, Raymond Coins, Abraham Lincoln Criss, Minnie Adkins, Howard Finster, Russell Gillespie, and Minnie Reinhardt. Traditional Catawba Valley Pottery, including a number of iconic "face jugs", is also represented.^[8]

References[]

External links[]

• Official Website
• HMA on Facebook
• United Arts Council of Catawba County
• Lake Norman Folk Art Festival

Coordinates: 35°44′10″N 81°20′03″W / 35.7361°N 81.3341°W / 35.7361; -81.3341