Two exhibits at MOWA to close in coming weeks

Two exhibits at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend will be closing in the coming weeks.

“Rafael Francisco Salas: In Flowered Fields” will close Sunday, May 2, and “Warhol and the Portfolio of Fame: The Photography of Doug Edmunds” will close on Sunday, May 9.

Salas, the son of a Mexican-American migrant worker and a mother who fled the suburbs for a life of farming, grew up in the fields and forests surrounding his family farm in rural Wisconsin. He left home to become an artist and spent 15 years in New York City, London and the American Southwest, returning to Wisconsin with a painterly appreciation for the landscape.

His paintings are reflections on rural life and the traditions of landscape painting, from the original sin of Manifest Destiny and settlement  to the challenges of contemporary agriculture beset by climate change, corporate farming and political resentment.         

For the exhibit, Salas curated rarely seen works from the museum’s collection and paired them with his own artwork.

 Edmunds is a photographer who decided 40 years ago to embark on a national portrait series and spent six years traveling from coast to coast to photograph people of influence, notoriety and accomplishments.

Among those in his series are Andy Warhol, Hank Aaron, Ella Fitzgerald, Aaron Copland, Allen Ginsberg, Lily Tomlin and Bob Woodward.

The museum is at 205 Veterans Ave.

For more information, call (262) 334-9638 or visit wisconsinart.org.