Summer Light: American Impressionist Paintings from the Thomas Clark Collection
May 22 - August 29As the days grow longer and the weather warmer, the Palmer will welcome summer with the first presentation of American Impressionist paintings from a major forthcoming gift. Featuring twenty-four works, this exhibition explores the durability and dissemination of Impressionism in the United States between about 1910 and 1940. The season’s associations with vitality and leisure...
Snowiss Galleries of American Art
Permanent CollectionThe Benjamin and Lillian K. Snowiss Galleries feature American painting and sculpture from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Displayed in three galleries, this core collection of the Palmer Museum’s holdings surveys the major artistic developments in the United States, especially portraiture from the Early Republic, Hudson River School landscapes, genre painting before...
Tonkin Gallery of Studio Glass and Ceramics
Permanent CollectionThe Harold L. and Edythe B. Tonkin Gallery showcases the Palmer Museum’s impressive holdings of contemporary studio glass and ceramics from around the world. On view are objects of dazzling variety and techniques by pioneering artists in the field of studio glass, as well as artists working in glass today from North America, England, Italy,...
Virtual Resources
Not ready to visit the museum in person? Visit the #PalmerfromHome through these virtual exhibitions and tours.
Asian American + Pacific Islander Heritage Month | Artist Highlight: Roger Shimomura
During May, the Palmer Museum of Art is observing Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! This is a celebration of the history and achievements of the diverse people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent in the United States. Join us as we examine a few works by Roger Shimomura, whose art considers themes of anti-Asian racism, identity, and what it means to be an American.
Written and recorded by Palmer Museum of Art graduate assistants Victoria Kenyon and Keri Mongelluzzo.
Penn State Creates
The Palmer Museum of Art is excited to announce the release of Penn State Creates: A Virtual Exhibition of Design, Craft, and Makery. The virtual gallery walkthrough highlights the unbounded creativity of over 40 Penn State students–both undergraduate and graduate–across colleges and majors, ranging from the visual and performing arts to materials science and medicine. Not limited to traditional artistic media, this dynamic exhibition showcases the diverse creative activities of our university community.
Click here to explore the Penn State Creates virtual exhibition.
Field Language: Exhibition Online Companion
This online companion acts as a digital accompaniment for Field Language: The Painting and Poetry of Warren and Jane Rohrer, the special exhibition organized by the Palmer Museum of Art. The exhibition examines the art of Warren Rohrer (1927–1995) as it evolved in conversation with poet Jane Turner Rohrer (b. 1928), his partner of nearly fifty years. Field Language traces dialogues between husband and wife, painting and poetry, and between tradition and modernism. This website serves as a digital exploration and will remain accessible while the exhibition is temporarily closed to the public due to maintenance issues at the museum.
Pennsylvania Scenery: Early Landscape Prints from the Tavern Collection
Pennsylvania’s natural beauty figured prominently in early nineteenth-century literary journals and publications celebrating the American landscape.
This virtual exhibition features a selection of picturesque highlights from the “Tavern Collection” of Pennsylvania prints amassed by John C. O’Connor and Ralph M. Yeager and gifted to the museum nearly thirty-five years ago.
Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art.
Click to Take the Tour
Who Am I? Art and Identity
This self-directed, interactive, online tour features a selection of objects from diverse areas of the museum’s collection, related through a common exploration of personal or cultural identity. Suggested lessons and discussion prompts will help support teachers in integrating the tour into class curriculum. Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges.
Click to Take the Tour
Women in Art: Activism and Resistance
This self-directed, interactive, online tour is intended for college-level courses and features a selection of objects by female artists in the museum’s collection. In celebration of the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, this tour highlights artists working in a variety of mediums during the 20th and 21st centuries who have contributed to political, social, and cultural change. Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges.
Click to Take the Tour
Palmer Tools for Teachers: Protest Song Project
Tools for Teachers is an educational resource for classroom teachers powered by the education team at the Palmer Museum of Art. This tool is made to support teachers and build a community of learning with art. The presentation will introduce a tried-and-true lesson created and tested by experienced teachers.
The Protest Song Project is a classroom lesson created by educator Madeilynann “Cookie” Mitchell, AP Art Teacher at Brooks DeBartolo Collegiate High School in Tampa, Florida. The Protest Song Project focuses on art’s ability to inspire and enact political and social change in the world. In this lesson, students will explore works of art from the Palmer Museum and beyond. Then, using a song of their choice for inspiration, students create their own work of “protest art.”
African Brilliance and the Purpose of Art
This interactive virtual tour accompanied the Palmer’s spring 2020 special exhibition African Brilliance: A Diplomat’s Sixty Years of Collecting and will remain available throughout the current academic year. Explore the exhibition installation, images of selected works, videos for guided viewing, and related art-making activity suggestions. Use your mouse or touch screen to click the navigational buttons included throughout the presentation to move through the tour. (Note: using the Chrome browser may optimize your experience).
Click to Take the Tour
Upcoming Exhibitions
Mark your calendars for these special exhibitions coming up later in the year.
Global Asias: Contemporary Asian and Asian American Art from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation
August 28 - December 12 Special Exhibition Gallery 1, second floorDrawn from the exceptional and diverse collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation, Global Asias examines the cosmopolitan, playful, and subtly subversive characteristics of contemporary Asian and Asian American art. The exhibition highlights the work of fifteen artists of Asian heritage who draw on a rich array of motifs, techniques, and cultural motivations...
Drawn from the exceptional and diverse collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation, Global Asias examines the cosmopolitan, playful, and subtly subversive characteristics of contemporary Asian and Asian American art. The exhibition highlights the work of fifteen artists of Asian heritage who draw on a rich array of motifs, techniques, and cultural motivations to construct diverse “Asias” in a modern global context.
Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art in conjunction with the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, the exhibition is divided into three thematic sections. “Exuberant Forms” features work that has the potential to reshape conventional views of abstract art—its composition, palette, materiality as well as its cultural implications, expanding and complicating the canonical narrative of abstraction. “Moving Stories” brings together powerful prints and mixed-media works that reflect on the experiences of migration, both within Asia and beyond. The artists in this section map their own diasporic trajectories, literally and metaphorically, and the art compels the viewer to move and to respond to the shifting socio-political realities of time and place. “Asias Reinvented” highlights two- and three-dimensional works that transform styles and techniques of traditional Asian arts in alignment with the vibes of the contemporary and the cosmopolitan. Combined, the works in Global Asias suggest the plurality and fluidity of “Asia” as cultural construct and creative practice. The exhibition is guest curated by Chang Tan, Assistant Professor of Art History and Asian Studies at Penn State. The exhibition will go on a national tour after premiering at the Palmer Museum of Art.
List of Artists in Global Asias
Kwang Young Chun
Jacob Hashimoto
Manabu Ikeda
Jun Kaneko
Dinh Q. Lê
Hung Liu
Mariko Mori
Hiroki Morinoue
Takashi Murakami
Roger Shimomura
Do Ho Suh
Akio Takamori
Barbara Takenaga
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Patti Warashina
Support for the exhibition and related educational and outreach programs has been made possible by a grant from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. Generous funding provided by Penn State’s Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost as part of the University’s Strategic Arts and Humanities Initiative. Additional support provided by our campus partners: Global Asias Initiative, Department of Art History, and the Penn State School of Visual Arts.
Ukiyo-e: Images of the Floating World, Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Permanent Collection
August 28 - December 5The art of ukiyo-e flourished in Japan during the Edo period (1615–1867), an interval characterized by the introduction and marked growth of a literate and sophisticated merchant class in the country’s urban centers, particularly in the city of Edo, modern Tokyo. Barred from foreign travel by the ruling shoguns, members of this group focused their...
Place to Place: Recent Gifts of American Drawings and Watercolors, 1900–1950
September 14 - December 12Place to Place offers a jaunt around America in the first half of the twentieth century. From New York to New Mexico to New Orleans, a range of sites in several different media are gathered to explore notions of place. International locales represented include Belgium, England, France, Germany, and Morocco. Conceived at a time when...
Events
July 8, 4:00 pm
Museum Conversation: Summer LightJoin Palmer Museum of Art Director Erin Coe and Adam Thomas, Curator of American Art, for a lively online discussion about the artists and paintings featured in Summer Light: American Impressionist Paintings from the Thomas Clark Collection. Discover the enduring qualities of Impressionism that began as a once-radical French movement and transitioned into a popular style across the United States, especially focused on capturing the effects of natural light and atmospheric conditions on the American landscape. Learn more about the collector, Thomas Clark, and the impact of his promised gift to the Palmer’s collection.
Register for the eventAbout the Museum
About the Museum
The Palmer Museum of Art on the Penn State University Park campus is a free-admission arts resource for the University and surrounding communities in central Pennsylvania.Areas of strength include the museum’s collection of American art from the late 18th century to the present, Old Master paintings, prints and photography, ceramics and studio glass, and a growing collection of modern and contemporary art. With a collection of 10,000 objects representing a variety of cultures and spanning centuries of art, the Palmer is the largest art museum between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and is the leading cultural resource for the region.
The Palmer receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and from the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau.
New Palmer Museum of Art
New Palmer Museum of Art
The Palmer Museum of Art is constructing a new museum within the Arboretum at Penn State to replace the current building on Curtin Road. The innovative new Palmer will be a larger facility that features education spaces, including a teaching gallery, flexible event spaces, and nearly twice the exhibition space of the current museum, allowing for expanded student, faculty, and public access to Penn State’s growing collection of 10,260 works of art.
To access information about the new Palmer Museum of Art and the Arboretum at Penn State, please click here to visit our online media room.
