The Palm Springs Art Museum is fortunate to have in its permanent collection significant works by major California, national and international artists. Represented in this exhibition are prints, paintings and sculptures created using a variety of traditional and non-traditional materials and methods ranging in scale from the diminutive to the grand. A number of issues relating to the creative process, abstraction versus representation and an exploration of the individual’s place in the cosmos connect this diverse body of works and offer the viewer a variety of possibilities for multi-leveled interaction and interpretation. Major works by Helen Frankenthaler, Soonja Oh Kim, Ed Ruscha, Sam Francis, Helen Lundeberg, Lita Albuquerque, Debra Butterfield and others are featured.

The exhibition will showcase some recent gifts that have come from three couples who have donated significant photographs in support of the new emphasis in photography.The focus of this exhibition is to present gifts from post-World War II American photography.

This select group of outstanding Impressionist and Modern paintings on loan from a private collection demonstrates how artists from the late 19th to late 20th century were willing and driven to experiment with both content and materials. It represents Impressionist forays into the nature and effects of light and atmosphere, which are translated as pigment on canvas; Post Impressionist amplifications of emotion and expression through vivid color; and mid-20th-century abstractions animated by hue and gesture.

Many artists from Mexico, Central and South America looked to their artistic heritage for inspiration. Artists such as Gunther Gerzo, Rufino Tamayo, Carlos Merida and others collected artifacts from their ancestral past in an effort to preserve them for future generations and to use as inspiration for their modern artistic production. This installation of works from the museum’s permanent collection brings together a wide range of expressions. Ancient figures and abstractions are displayed along side modern ones. Echoes from the past can almost be heard, like a whisper, joining voices with the modern expressions paying homage to their roots.