St. Louis Painters Invitational

June 9 - September 16, 2007 Free Admission

During its first five years of operation, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art has established a tradition of exhibiting artists from the heartland alongside nationally and internationally recognized artists. We have defined this area as extending from Chicago to Santa Fe.

The Daum Museum already has assembled a sizable collection of artists from the Kansas City area. In curating this exhibition, I hoped to identify artists from the greater St. Louis area for possible addition to the museum’s permanent collection of regional artists. Because of the large number of St. Louis artists, I decided to limit the exhibition to painters only.

My intent with the St. Louis Painters Invitational and the accompanying catalog was to document painting in St. Louis at this moment in time, thus creating an artistic time capsule to which future St. Louis painters, critics, historians, and collectors might refer. My choices were driven by no particular agenda, theme or unifying concept; I simply wanted to discover new artists, and showcase those artists with whose work I already was familiar.

The most exciting aspect of this project was bringing together a diverse group of artists whose works explore multiple aesthetic approaches, varying conceptual intent and expansive historical associations, and who represent a wide range of ages and accomplishments.

-from “St. Louis Painters 2007 Invitational” catalog introduction by Douglass Freed