Friday, January 14, 2011

NEW EXHIBIT! "Gone for the Day: Ned Smith and the Pennsylvania Game Commission"


We hope you're staying nice and warm this week! We're cozying up in the Olewine Gallery and getting everything ready for our new exhibit opening this Saturday: Gone for the Day: Ned Smith and the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Throughout his prolific career, Ned Smith enjoyed a collaborative relationship with the Pennsylvania Game Commission. He worked as a staff illustrator for the agency, creating over 120 cover paintings for Pennsylvania Game News magazine. In the 1960s he began a monthly column he dubbed "Gone for the Day" that proved to be enduringly popular. The column ran for four years, and in 1971 was republished in book form, and is currently in its eleventh printing. Ned also produced several of the Game Commission's "Working Together for Wildlife" prints, including the classic "Dutch Country Bluebirds."

The Center's current exhibit, Gone for the Day: Ned Smith and the Pennsylvania Game Commission celebrates the legendary partnership between Ned Smith and the PGC. Many rarely-exhibited pieces from the Center's own collection are on display, as well as loans from a wide variety of sources.

Some of the exhibit's most exciting loans come from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where Ned Smith's widow, Marie, donated all of his field journals and thousands of field sketches shortly after Smith's death in 1985. Most of these items have never been displayed publicly until this exhibition!

We hope to see you soon!