Exhibitions
TOOLS AS ART: WORK AND PLAY
Knoxville Museum of Art / 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive May 3 - August 4th
Colleen Barry, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Maria Porges, James Surls, Wayne Thiebaud
Drawn from the remarkable collection of John Hechinger, a hardware store magnate, and art collector, the 68 featured works in the exhibition present images of the most familiar tools as extraordinary works of art. Encompassing photographs, paintings, works on paper, and sculptures, the exhibition celebrates the value of labor and honors the creativity of builders, artists, hobbyists, and self-reliant DIY-ers. The renowned art collection of the late hardware magnate John Hechinger exemplifies this practical and artistic universality. Over his long career, Hechinger devoted much of his energy, playfulness, and passion to this collection, seeking out works from numerous genres and artists of many backgrounds, all of them bound by a common theme: the democracy of the tool. In Work and Play, curator Sarah Tanguy explores interlocking principles: tools as icons of labor; labor as a component of creativity; creativity as a form of play; and the art of tools as the most incisive expression of their interrelatedness. This exhibition celebrates the virtues inherent in the art of the tool and highlights the astounding breadth of the Hechinger Collection by illuminating this unique, but ubiquitous, idiom.
ABOUT THE HECHINGER COLLECTION
The complete Hechinger Collection, featuring nearly 400 works of art, was donated to IA&A in 2003 by hardware-industry pioneer John Hechinger, Sr. The collection’s contemporary prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures represent a wealth of 20th-century art that incorporates tools and hardware by artists Berenice Abbott, Arman, Jim Dine, Walker Evans, Jacob Lawrence, Fernand Leger, and Claes Oldenburg, among others. The collection celebrates the ubiquity of tools in our lives with art that magically transforms utilitarian objects into fanciful works of beauty, surprise, and wit.
