Wells International Foundation Summer Intern Curates Online Exhibition of Beauford Delaney Portraits

PARIS - Aug. 6, 2019 - PRLog -- The Wells International Foundation (WIF) is pleased to announce the opening for Beauford Delaney: A Study in Portraiture, a digital exhibition curated by Maija Brennan.

Brennan is WIF's 2019 summer intern.  A rising senior at Smith College, she is majoring in art history – with a concentration in museum studies – and French.  She is interested in learning how non-profit organizations work to fund artists and help them show their work and is passionate about making art available to the general public.  She is especially interested in exploring how contemporary artists who struggle to promote their work can "even the playing field" using technology.

WIF's founder and CEO, Dr. Monique Y. Wells, learned of Brennan's interest in WIF's Summer Internship Program through Columbia Global Centers | Paris.  Brennan was finishing her junior year abroad there when her French professor, who also served as Associate Director of Smith College in Paris, introduced her to Dr. Wells.

Brennan spent six weeks compiling research on Delaney's art production, focusing on his portraiture and how these works represent some of the most important relationships in his life.  She investigated the evolution of the composition and style of Delaney's portraits as he matured as an artist and produced increasing numbers of Abstract Expressionist paintings.  Based on this research, she selected several works for the exhibition.

Beauford Delaney: A Study in Portraiture presents portraits from three periods in Delaney's life – the years he spent in Boston, New York City, and Paris.  A fourth segment of the exhibition presents several self-portraits from the New York and Paris years.  A timeline of the artist's life provides additional perspective on each segment of the exhibition.

A total of twenty-one (21) portraits are displayed in the exhibition.  The full depth and breadth of Delaney's artistic genius are represented in the works selected for this online show.

Brennan had the following to say about the exhibition:

"Beauford Delaney was an astonishingly talented painter whose works hang in some of today's most culturally and artistically important institutions. I hope that this digital exhibit can be a reference point and educational tool for those who want to further their understanding of his life and art in the same way they would have had they visited one of these institutions.  I also hope that visitors find the exhibition to be a place to simply celebrate the beautiful and sensitively rendered portraits he created throughout his lifetime."

Access Beauford Delaney: A Study in Portraiture here: http://www.wellsinternationalfoundation.org/portraiture-exhibition