Little, winner of the 2000 Acadia Arts Achievement Award, has authored several books on art, such as Edward Hopper’s New England (Pomegranate Communications, 1993) and The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent (University of California Press, 1999)

Little also writes for regional and national publications including Art New England and Art in America. He contributed an essay to the catalog for the exhibition Bernard Langlais: Independent Spirit at the Portland Museum of Art in 2002.

At Bates, Little will focus on Langlais’ current exhibition in the context of his greater oeuvre. The exhibition Medium and Abstraction, curated by Erin Gilligan ’09, focuses on a selection of Langlais sculptures from the 1950s and ’60s that show a particular influence of the New York avant-garde. The inclusion of wooden assemblages by Louise Nevelson and portraits of Langlais imply a larger context of influence for his work, which Little will discuss.

Langlais, born in Old Town, Maine, in 1921, embarked on an art career at a young age. His early work is predominantly paintings and collages. In 1956, Langlais and his wife bought a summer cottage in Cushing, Maine. While completing renovations, Langlais began experimenting with wood, and developed his self-proclaimed “painting in wood” technique. He is most famous for whimsical animal sculptures and tableaus created with a fusion of painting and wood carving.

Also featured in the museum are the exhibitions Landscape Drawings from the Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection and Our Positive Bodies: Mapping Our Treatment, Sharing Our Choices. The Hartley exhibition showcases ink and graphite drawings by this famed artist born in Lewiston, Maine, who wished to have a memorial collection in his hometown.

Marsden is known as a pioneer of American modernist painting in the early 20th century. Our Positive Bodies originated in Nairobi, Kenya, and focuses on “body mapping,” a palliative process through which life-sized silhouette self-portraits of women affected by AIDS are used to divulge feelings and memories.

The Langlais and Hartley exhibitions close on Oct. 3, while Our Positive Bodies remains up until Dec. 11. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and closed on major holidays. Admission is free.

For more information, please call 207-786-6158 or visit the museum Web site at www.bates.edu/museum.xml.

The gift establishes the Joanna D. and Henry L. McCorkle Works on Paper Collection at the Bates College Museum of Art. “The great strength of the McCorkles’ collecting is the overwhelming number of excellent works by Maine’s finest artists,” said Genetta McLean, director of the college’s musuem. “This is a wonderful gift to the Lewiston-Auburn community, and we are pleased to have it here.”

The McCorkles have been collecting art in Maine for 15 years. Their enthusiasm for art and passionate collecting was documented in an exhibition Carried Away: the Joy of Collecting Art in Maine, which drew a record number of visitors to the college’s musuem in summer 1999.

“The Bates College Museum of Art is one of New England’s hidden treasures, the newest of Maine’s Art Trail museums and a bright place to show and see the creative spirit at work,” said Henry McCorkle. “Jody and I are honored to add to the Bates Musuem’s growing collection of works on paper and to include examples by outstanding artists new to Maine, like the marvelous drawing Little House Near the Bay by Anne Minich.”

Visitors are invited to see works from the McCorkle collection Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m., at the Bates College Museum of Art, 75 Russell St. Guided tours for schools and other groups are welcome and the public is welcomed at no charge. Call 207-786-6158 for more information.

Arthur has been acknowledged internationally as the leading authority on contemporary American realism and figurative painting. His books and exhibition catalogues include Richard Estes: The Urban Landscape, Realist Drawings and Watercolors and Realists at Work: Studio Interviews and Working Methods of Ten Contemporary Realists. He has curated numerous exhibits, including America 1976, a bicentennial project sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior that opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and toured American museums for two years. He also has organized mid career retrospectives of the paintings of Jack Beal, Richard Estes and Alfred Leslie.

Arthur, former director of the Boston University Art Gallery, has served on advisory panels for the National Endowment of the Arts, U.S. Dept. of the Interior and the National Science Foundation. Since 1975 he has advised private collectors and museums in the United States, Europe and Japan in the selection and purchase of works.

Notations of Color: Oil Sketching in Maine features small-scale oil sketches by more than 40 American landscape painters of the late 19th and 20th century, including George Bellows, Robert Henri, Neil Welliver, Joel Babb, Ann Lofquist and Lewiston-native Marsden Hartley, according to Genetta McLean, director of the Bates Museum of Art and curator of the exhibit.

In addition to works from the Bates College Museum of Art’s collection, the exhibit has works from other public and private collections, including the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Colby College Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, Ogunquit Museum of American Art and the Portland Museum of Art.

This exhibition was generously funded by Fleet Charitable Trust and friends of the Bates College Museum of Art.

The public is invited to enjoy this exhibition free of charge. Special Saturday parent-child landscape painting workshops will be held during the course of the exhibition. The Museum of Art is open Tuesdays-Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Schools and other groups are welcome by appointment. For more information or to schedule a group tour, call 207-786-6158.