a door is not a window herb jackson paintings opens this saturday, august 26 at the gregg museum of art & design on the campus of north carolina state university. the museum is having a grand reopening after an extensive renovation. a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10:00 a.m. is followed by exhibition viewings, activities, artist demonstrations, tours and performances. herb jackson paintings will span 35 years of jackson's career including a few paintings never previously exhibited before. we are thrilled for herb jackson to be having such an awesome show in his hometown of raleigh.
a door is not a window
herb jackson paintings
on display in the sanderson-black gallery
august 26, 2017-january 28, 2018
this presentation features major abstract works from the past two decades by raleigh native herb jackson, one of north carolina’s premier contemporary artists. the exhibition employs special lighting made possible by support from wells fargo.
herb jackson was born in raleigh, north carolina, in 1945. he cannot recall a time when he was not busy painting and drawing, but remembers beginning to sell his artwork by the time he was ten or eleven. in 1962, he won first place in the north carolina artists exhibition, an annual juried show for state residents sponsored by the north carolina museum of art, while he was still a student at broughton high school. the runners-up were art professors with established careers and decades of experience. a local art critic dismissed the teenager’s win at the time as merely a lucky “fluke.”
many years after jackson had won his first award at age seventeen – and long after his reputation had achieved national status – he finally received a retraction and apology from the critic who had downplayed his early win. “you were no fluke,” the former critic admitted.
in 1999, Jackson received the north carolina award, the highest civilian honor in the state. in 2015, he was given the north caroliniana society award for extraordinary contributions to the state’s cultural heritage. jackson’s work is now in more than 80 collections, including the baltimore museum of art; the british museum; the brooklyn museum; chicago art institute; museum of fine arts, boston; philadelphia museum of art; victoria and albert museum, london; and the whitney museum of art, nyc. a door is not a window is his first museum show in his hometown in many years.
the title of the exhibition comes from an explanation jackson once offered about his work. “the history of narrative painting,” he said, “is based on representing a reality as if were viewed through a window, whereas I am interested in presenting a new entity that one enters, as if by a door.”
all available paintings by herb jackson are on our website under his artist's tab. hidell brooks is looking forward to then and now a retrospective exhibition of paintings by herb jackson at the gallery in october 2018!