Exhibition: Critical Eye Selections from the Kim and Ruth Reineking Collection

Regionally and nationally renowned artists represented include: Anne Appleby, John Buck, Bobby Tilton Cone, Catherine Courtenaye, Gennie DeWeese, Elizabeth Dove, Clarice Dreyer, Bev Beck Glueckert, Stephen Glueckert, Kristi Hager, Trey Hill, Jerry Iverson, Terry Karson, Kathryn Kress, Beth Lo, Jon Lodge, Cathryn Mallory, Bobbie McKibben, Neil Parsons/Tall Eagle, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Jerry Rankin, James Reineking, Ace Sloan, and Patrick Zentz.
The exhibition features selections from the Reineking’s promised gift to the MAM collection.  A sculptural vessel by Rudy Autio, a central figure in national ceramics, shares the gallery with a sculptural buoy form by Trey Hill, titled Buoyant, that might surprise a viewer familiar with his branched ceramic forms. In another area, Lela Autio’s lit neon Plexiglas faces Jon Lodge’s monochromatic-in-white Torqued Strands (Motet). The Reineking Collection is intensely local and deliberately modernist and contemporary; as such, it’s a natural extension of MAM’s collection in terms of subject matter and focus.
The Reinekings have collected quietly over the last few decades, assembling a magnificent collection almost as a by-product of their numerous friendships with artists and the museum. Many of the artists in the Reineking Collection have longstanding connections to MAM. Through significant donations of art, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith helped establish the museum’s important Contemporary American Indian Art Collection, which serves museums across the nations through loans of work by significant Native artists. Stephen Glueckert served as MAM’s curator for over 25 years. The Reinekings shared personal memories of their connection with artworks and important artists as vignettes on the wall labels accompanying many of the artworks.