By Aden Arnold
Sponsored by Montana Museum of Art & Culture
- 40 paintings, watercolors, and drawings
- Size: various
- Crates: 4, 2′ x 2′ x 3′ – 4′ x 5′ x 3′
- Availability: June 2027 – December 2029
- Integrative Resources: Digital media, postards, artist talk by Rafael Chacon, Director of MMAC, text panels and extended labels.
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION
Aden Arnold was an accomplished artist and educator and a transformative figure in the diffusion of modernism in Montana. From his arrival to Missoula in 1939 to teach at the University of Montana until his death in 1973, Arnold advocated for art as a discipline of the highest order and for modernism as the appropriate direction for the arts.
As a university professor, Arnold played a significant role championing modern art by teaching thousands of students and by helping to establish the Montana Institute of the Arts (MIA) and the Montana Art Educators Association (MAEA), the state’s first modernist arts organizations. A modernist himself, he gradually made the transition from classical figuration to abstract expressionism, all the while teaching and promoting the major styles of the 20th century.
Arnold’s greatest contribution was arguably his impact on education. His rigorous standards, professional curiosity, and administrative decisions set the bar high at Montana’s flagship university and across the state. His second contribution lay in the integrity of his art. In both his artmaking and teaching, Arnold forcefully defended the traditions of academic representation, while also promoting modernist abstraction. That so much of his artistic output exists in this collection is nothing short of miraculous, but it is the integrity of Arnold’s output and the unique vision of his art that merit our attention and celebration. Arnold deserves personal recognition as well. A closeted queer artist, he forged a creative life in rural Montana despite the legal repression, social stigma, and personal isolation of the times.
MAGDA 