This second feature in the Clyfford Still Museum’s Spotlight series—which highlights select works through small, highly focused exhibitions—explores a double-sided, undocumented early painting which may have been made in Alberta. Presented to the Museum in 2013 as a potential Clyfford Still work with an intriguing backstory, the painting is on long-term loan to the Museum for further research and study. Using this painting as a case study, Spotlight 02 illustrates how professionals examine unauthenticated artworks to determine their authorship. In the Museum’s first use of a double-sided frame, the exhibition presents verified Clyfford Still artworks in juxtaposition with the undocumented painting’s front composition, as well as other Still works that could relate to the painting’s reverse composition.
Visitors are encouraged to make both technical and thematic comparisons between the artworks, study historical documentation that places Still’s family in 1920s Alberta where the artwork may have been painted, and draw conclusions about the authorship of this work.
A single-wall exhibition, Spotlight 02 is surrounded by a comprehensive new display of the permanent collection installed throughout all of the Lanny and Sharon Martin Galleries.