The Susquehanna Art Museum, in keeping with our Harrisburg city leaders’ sweeping vision of establishing the downtown as a center for the arts and education, has firmly placed the next piece of tile in the glittering cultural mosaic painstakingly being wrought from our once de-vitalized city. Having bought the Kunkel Building formerly occupied by Dean Witter on Third and Market streets, the Susquehanna Art Museum has poured close to three-quarters of a million dollars into major renovations to refit the space for their needs. A black-tie gala celebration on the evening of April 12th will mark the opening of their new space and the Museum opens to the public once again on Thursday, April 13, providing plenty of viewing opportunities for their fabulous upcoming exhibit by nationally recognized artist, Grace Hartigan.

The Susquehanna Art Museum, which was formerly located in Strawberry Square and is celebrating its tenth year anniversary, stated in their press release dated November 24, 1999, that they feel "the Museum’s new home will serve as a cornerstone within a downtown district that most recently became home to the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts. The move of the Susquehanna Art Museum is a strategic step in the development of a downtown arts and cultural region." According to Jonathan VanDyke, Executive Director of the Museum, the new space will "be contiguous" as it was not in the Strawberry Square facility where the main exhibit area, Doshi gallery, offices and classroom were scattered about the two-story building without easy connective access. "The new facility, which gives us an additional 2,500 square feet of space, will consist of an education wing, class and conference rooms, gallery and offices." The Museum will be accessed through a central security point located at the main entrance which has been revised with "a dramatic glass entrance…and a lobby area with eighteen foot ceilings."

According to Van Dyke, some of the most important renovations the Museum had performed were the installation of a "museum-quality temperature and humidity control system, advanced lighting, a new security and surveillance system, and an art storage compartment." Those additions were necessary as the Museum will be seeking accreditation by the American Association of Museums in an effort to draw major touring exhibits to their facility.

More than half of the Museum’s renovations are being donated by Harristown Development Corporation and the H. B. Alexander Foundation. A capital campaign is being launched to raise the remaining three hundred thousand in funds needed to complete the renovation process. The Museum is offering naming opportunities to any major donors that may be interested. So, if you’ve ever dreamed of having a classroom or gallery named after you, now’s your chance.

The Museum’s new space will contain four separate galleries for exhibits with "unique movable exhibition walls that roll on built-in tracks." Contained within those four galleries is space for the Doshi Gallery for Contemporary Art, which became a part of the Susquehanna Art Museum in 1997. The Doshi Gallery will continue to focus upon the works of local, living artists and plans to hold at least nine annual exhibits. The Museum is planning on continuing their tradition of presenting four seasonal exhibits by internationally-recognized artists. The first in the new facility will feature the abstract expressionist works of painter Grace Hartigan.

Hartigan was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1922. She was part of "that brilliant, contentious, avant garde world [of the Abstract Expressionists] in New York’s forties and fifties," says Melody Davis, the art historian who is penning the biographical and critical article that will appear in the exhibit’s color catalogue. Hartigan was not formally educated, but, Davis points out, her friends "Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Lee Krasner, Milton Avery, Adoph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline … and later Larry Rivers and Philip Guston … were her school." But traditional art history has almost ignored her; she gets only a brief mention in "one of the two hallmark studies on Abstract Expressionism," says Davis.

In the 1950’s she moved away from abstraction and toward figuration. Van Dyke points out that whereas Andy Warhol never would have admitted it, it’s generally thought that Hartigan influenced his work. But, Davis adds, "[Although] Hartigan uses subjects drawn from popular culture … she is not a Pop artist. Pop Art is … depersonalized … Nothing could be further from Hartigan’s Marilyn Monroe than Andy Warhol’s wall of her repeated numbingly, with subtle variations." Critics agree that her friend Helen Frankenthaler provides a good comparison, with her technique of matte color and color veils. "The problem with Hartigan’s painting for the art historian," says Davis, "is its classlessness. She seems to have packed about four or five life times of styles into one life."

Perhaps Hartigan’s own thoughts can shed light on her perspective on being an artist, and on the experience of viewing her work. Hartigan herself has stated that "rawness must be resolved into form and unity; without the ‘rage for order’ how can there be art? You should be able to enter a painting like a promenade — you should be able to walk in anywhere and walk out anywhere." Davis concludes that there is one particular facet of Hartigan’s work which separates her work from the rest. "It is the elusive quality called happiness … Tough, challenging, sarcxastic and tense at times — it is all of these, but in the main it is playful. There is a life-sustaining reason to make it and view it."

Hartigan (whose bio reads like a Colleen McCullough novel and winds through fifteen solo exhibitions, four different states in which she resided, four marriages and one son) actually exhibited her early works under the name of George Hartigan. She did this as a tribute to George Sand and George Eliot, two women who refused to be bound by the male-dominated society of their age. As a woman who studied mechanical drafting in 1942, worked as a draftsman in a warplant and divorced three husbands in a time when divorce was a scandal, it’s no wonder she admired and identified with those two stalwart ladies.

Hartigan, now seventy-eight, continues to paint in her home in Baltimore, Maryland. She will be present for the Museum’s opening on April 12th. The Museum’s hours will remain the same, open Monday – Saturday from 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., and by appointment. Admission to the Museum will continue to be free. They will also continue to offer their education programs for children and adults. Anyone interested in obtaining more information on those programs can visit their website at sqart.org or call them at 233-8668.