Airing Out the Attic

Jennifer Renshaw, LaVie en Rose

On display

July 11 – September 9, 2018

Elizabeth Ruggles, Portrait of Ben Whitmire

When the Trenton City Museum opened its doors to the public in 1978, it had already acquired a small collection of decorative art and historical objects, and a few pieces of fine art. Over the last forty years, the collection has grown to comprise nearly six thousand objects including more than 250 works of fine art, both donated and purchased. To celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the Museum’s opening, the Trenton Museum Society is Airing Out the Attic and putting on display more than eighty works from its fine arts collection.

George Bradshaw, Fourth Presbyterian Church

For the first twenty years of Ellarslie Mansion operating as a museum, the Trenton Museum Society relied on the generosity of its donors for additions to the fine arts collection. In those years, pieces sculpted and painted by important Trenton artists like Frank Applegate, George Bradshaw and Henry MacGinnis, instructors at the Trenton School of Industrial Arts, were accessioned into the collection. Occasionally a well known Trenton artist like Thomas Malloy, Marge Chavooshian or Robert Sakson, whose work had been on display in a small group or solo show at Ellarslie, would donate a piece to the collection. As the Museum Society concentrated on developing its collections of Trenton made porcelain and historical objects, fine arts took a backseat.

Arthur Josephson, Baboon

However, with the support of the Trenton City Museum, and especially early director Ben Whitmire, the Trenton arts scene was growing from the 70s through the 90s.   In 2002, the Collections Committee of the Trenton Museum Society realized that it had a responsibility to collect the work of the Trenton area’s many talented contemporary artists. That year, TMS purchased The Puritan by Paul Matthews from Ellarslie Open XX, and so began a tradition of purchases every year from the annual juried show.

Dallas Piotrowski, Woodland Ferns

Read Janet Purcell’s review with its unique perspective on the exhibit. NJ.com