When the Aidron Duckworth Art Museum opened, in 2002 in its namesake artist’s former home in Meriden, it had a simple mission.
Duckworth, a British artist who settled in the Upper Valley in 1976 and became an influential art teacher, set up a trust before his death in 2001 to create the museum and look after his work. Since it opened, the museum has hosted more than 30 exhibitions of his work, as well as around 60 shows by guest artists that have brought new audiences to Duckworth’s paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture.
By many measures, the museum has been a success, and has fulfilled its mission. But this weekend, it will open for its final season.
Grace Harde, one of the museum’s founding board members, wants to find a home for Duckworth’s work that will ensure its conservation and, if possible, give it the attention, from curators and viewers alike, that she feels it deserves.
“My concern is that the body of work be cared for and reach the public in a way that we have not been able to do,” Harde said in an interview in Duckworth’s former living quarters, which the museum has preserved.
The charitable trust Duckworth set up specifies that the art be offered to Syracuse University, in New York, and Harde said negotiations are underway. “I think there’s a good fit,” Harde said.
During an interview Tuesday with Harde and Ben Finer, the museum’s current director, real estate agent Erika Smith was walking a series of potential purchasers of the 1940 former schoolhouse that Duckworth purchased in 1976 and lived in until his death. The proceeds from the sale would go with the art, Harde said.
The trust Duckworth drew up in 1997 suggests that the artist himself was aware that the museum wasn’t destined to live forever. “I think it was a bit ephemeral in his mind,” Finer said.
Harde and Kathleen O’Malley, the longtime registrar at the Hood Museum of Art, turned Duckworth’s home and teaching space into a museum, Finer said. (Harde also credited builder Stephen Marcus with turning the building into a proper place to show art. Marcus also has been on hand to hang the exhibitions.) O’Malley volunteered on Saturdays to show Harde how to organize the collections, which consist of nearly 1,300 works, not all of which were endowed by their creator with much in the way of records.
“He was actually good about dating things and signing things,” Finer said. But, “it wasn’t as if he left portfolios or statements about series.”
Duckworth was uncommon among artists in that he wasn’t interested in building a viewership for his work. Though he was well-educated, at schools in London, Illinois, New York and Ohio, he operated almost like an outsider artist, working entirely on his own terms.
“I don’t paint for other people,” he once told the Valley News. “I paint for me.”
As a result of this and other factors, he had a low profile. Harde estimated that maybe 300 to 400 of his works found their way into private hands. Syracuse holds one of his sculptures. All the rest is in Meriden.
While the museum has held the vast bulk of Duckworth’s output, it hasn’t always put that work at the center of its enterprise. Since 2008, the museum has hosted guest artist exhibitions in addition to shows from the Duckworth collection. Finer noted that while Harde has enjoyed being involved in leading an arts organization, it has become something other than what was intended.
“All those things, as you say, I enjoy,” Harde said, “but they are away from our original purpose.”
Harde, 83, said she’d like to have Duckworth’s work secured in a larger institution before she turns 85, fearing that if her health deteriorated she wouldn’t be able to see it through.
For now the art remains in Meriden. “Duckworth XXXIII – Abstraction and the Infinite Plane,” as its title indicates the 33rd exhibition of his work, opens Saturday, alongside “An Ocean of Galaxies,” an exhibition of recent work by New York city artist Tara Sabharwal. A reception is planned for 3 to 6 on Saturday afternoon.
The museum, which has always been a May to October operation, will have what Finer called “a normal year,” but August will be busy, with dance performances from two companies, one from Dartmouth College, the other from Vermont. And the last guest artist exhibition will invite all of the previous guest artists to return, Finer said. If a lot of them accept, it should make for a lively final opening reception in September.
By then, the final disposition of the art should be known and a buyer will likely have emerged for the property. In the meantime, the museum is open Fridays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Catch it while you can.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center holds a reception at 5 p.m. Thursday for the artists in its spring exhibitions: painter Collin Leech, photographers Joan Crimlisk and John Lehet, watercolorists Nick Mayer and Marion Blodgett, multi-media artist Stacy Harshman, and the hospital’s employees and volunteers. An art walk is scheduled for 5:30.
“Revered Vermont Libraries,” drawings in Prismacolor pencil by Woodstock artist Gary Barron, opens Wednesday at Chelsea Public Library. Through June 30
The annual Peeps Diorama Contest at the Library Arts Center in Newport, N.H., closes Thursday with a “Peeps and Pints” party from 5 to 7 p.m., for the over-21 crowd only.
Two Rivers Printmaking Studio is holding a series of workshops led by Upper Valley printmakers through the spring. The next, pronto plate lithography with Mary Mead, is scheduled for May 4 and 5 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. For more information, go to tworiversprintmaking.org.
Library Arts Center, Newport, N.H. Annual Student Art Show, featuring artwork from students in Newport’s public schools. Through Thursday.
North Common Arts, Chelsea. “Glass Onions,” painted glass objects by Chelsea artist Nick De Friez, through Tuesday.
Chelsea Public Library. “Promises of Spring,” watercolors by Brookfield, Vt., artist Marcia Hammond. Through Tuesday.
Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, White River Junction. Retrospective of prints by Norwich artist Penelope Bennett. Through Tuesday.
Ledyard Gallery, Howe Library, Hanover. “Color Sculptures,” paintings by Alison Palizzolo, is on view through Wednesday.
Betty Grant Gallery, Converse Free Library, Lyme. Paintings by Liliana Paradiso. Through June.
BigTown Gallery, Rochester, Vt. “Bringing the Bull Home,” work on paper and in ceramics and painted shoes by Rick Skogsberg, and “Figures in the Landscape,” recent paintings by Burlington artist Peter Fried. Through May 4.
Chew & Co. Design, Hanover. Pastels by former Upper Valley resident Phyllis Orem. Through June 1.
Kilton Public Library, West Lebanon. Artwork by students at Hanover Street School. Through May.
Long River Gallery, White River Junction. “Through the Trees,” pastels by White River Junction artist Kathryn Detzer.
Main Street Museum, White River Junction. “Jack Rowell, Cultural Documentarian: Portraits of Vermont People and Other Wildlife.”
Scavenger Gallery, White River Junction. “Flower Portraits,” Claremont artist Sue Lawrence’s oil paintings of floral blossoms.
Steven Thomas, Inc. Fine Arts & Antiques, White River Junction. Work by Upper Valley “vintage” artists, such as Alice Standish Buell, John Semple and Horace Brown.
Tunbridge Public Library. Woodburning and painting by tattoo artist Tom Ball. Through May 3.
Zollikofer Gallery, White River Junction. Paintings and tourism posters by Burlington painter Kevin Ruelle. Through June 26.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
