LIN EMERY: A Movement, 1957-2017

This exhibition focuses on the longstanding innovative practice of New Orleans based artist Lin Emery. It features more than a dozen examples of her work and includes eight wind-powered kinetic sculptures. In addition to recent pieces in aluminum that are inspired by nature, the exhibition showcases Emery’s paper maquettes for selected large-scale public art commissions, as well as early bronze static pieces. During the run of this exhibition, Emery’s work will also be on view in an adjoining gallery in the concurrent exhibition Tina Freeman: Artist Spaces.

Biography:

Based in New Orleans, Lin Emery is an internationally acclaimed sculptor whose work is part of many public, private and corporate collections. Institutions holding her work include the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Weisman Collection, Los Angeles, CA; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Longue Vue Gardens, New Orleans, LA; Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ; New Orleans Civic Center; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; State Library of Louisiana, Baton Rouge; Auburn University Museum of Fine Art, AL; The Historic New Orleans Collection, LA; Hofstra University in New York; and Loyola University, New Orleans, among others.

Born in New York in 1926, Emery trained informally in Paris from 1949-50 at the studio of Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine. She learned welding and bronze casting at the New York Sculpture Center, before moving to New Orleans in 1945. Along with six other artists, she founded the first cooperative gallery in New Orleans, the Orleans Gallery, in 1956 on Royal Street. By 1963, Emery also opened a cooperatively run foundry, the Orleans Workshop. From 1969-70 she served as visiting faculty at the Tulane University School of Architecture, and in 1976 she prepared the International Sculpture Conference in New Orleans, which included speakers Isamu Noguchi, Yaacov Agam, Hilton Kramer, Beverly Pepper, Irving Sandler, Seymour Lipton and George Sugarman. Her advisory appointments have since included many other organizations such as the College Art Association, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, Arts Council of New Orleans, Louisiana ArtWorks, and the CAC New Orleans.

Past solo exhibitions of Emery’s work have included Sculpture Center, New York (1957, 1958); New Orleans Museum of Art (1962, 1964, 1996, 2013); Orleans Gallery, New Orleans (1962, 1964, 1967, 1968); Valley House Gallery, Dallas (1963); Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe (1966); Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (1978); Art Life Mitsuhashi Gallery, Kyoto, Japan (1999); Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans (2012) and the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens (2016) in addition to many other museums and galleries. Emery has been recognized with numerous awards, including prizes from the New Orleans Mayor (1980), Virginia Center for Creative Arts (1981), National Endowment for the Arts (1983), Delgado Society (1997), Osaka Prefecture in Japan (1998), the Louisiana Governor (2001), National Academy Museum in New York (2005) and the Opus Award (2012).

Exhibition Announcement