On Display: Lynden Sculpture Garden

If you are looking for something to do either today or Tuesday, you might want to go check out the Haiti and Midwestern Imagination exhibit at the Lynden Sculpture Garden.  According to their website, "This exhibition examines the role played by Haiti in the imagination of Orville Bulman (1904-1978), a Midwestern businessman-turned-artist, and his patrons. Set primarily in the 1950s, when Haitian cultural export—particularly of what is now referred to as first generation Haitian art--was on the rise and the country was opening itself to tourism, and when Americans were awash with a postwar optimism that celebrated America’s political and economic power, it tells us relatively little about Haiti at mid-century and a great deal about the ways Americans saw themselves and the rest of the world. As an artist, Orville Bulman was not so much self-taught as self-made; he worked assiduously to create and perpetuate his own narrative, and he made liberal use of contemporary American stereotypes of businessmen and artists to define his niche in the art market of the ‘50s and ‘60s—a market in which Abstract Expressionism was the reigning avant-garde. For Bulman, Haiti—which he visited for 12 days in 1952--was the source of a visual vocabulary, a style, and a sense of himself as a professional artist that sustained his career for more than 25 years."

Orville Bulman, Bateau Rapide

The Lynden Sculpture Garden is open on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and Saturdays and Sundays from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM.