Blog 15: The Homecoming
The journey of seeing my brother Lewis Lanza Rudolph’s art recognized, exhibited and shared continues to be a long journey. You might recall Lewis passed away in October of 2012 over three years ago. My husband Bruce and I brought Lewis’s art collection home with us to PA after selling his house and closing out his estate.
When Mulberry Art Studio welcomed my family and I with a tribute exhibit of our brother’s paintings in 2014 I hoped it would result in open doors and opportunities to see his abstract artwork released.
It has resulted in other open doors, but the process is so much slower than I ever imagined.
The next door:
Avis Anderson is the Curator and Executive Director of Monmouth Museum in Lincroft NJ, the town located next to my late brother’s home town Red Bank . His resume shows that Lewis exhibited at the Monmouth Museum in the late 1970’s. I wrote to Ms. Anderson and invited her to attend the August 2014 Mulberry Art Studios exhibit entitled A Brothers Legacy, in Lancaster, PA. After meeting Avis Anderson in Lancaster, I applied for a retrospective exhibit to honor Lewis at the Monmouth Museum at Brookdale College in New Jersey. Last year I received acceptance with an invitation to exhibit four decades of Lewis’s paintings May 20 – Sept 4, 2016 in the Main Gallery of the museum.
In February Bruce and I traveled to New Jersey to visit the museum, to view the space and meet with public relations director Laura Oncea and Catherine Clark, my primary contact and curator for the exhibit. I enjoyed sitting down with both of them to discuss exhibit plans.
Our return visit to NJ last week brought back memories of the December day over three years ago when we drove away from Lewis’s emptied 40 Arthur Place residence in neighboring Red Bank. I remembered how his large abstract paintings filled a 17 foot U-Haul truck. I recalled that after a long day of packing Lewis’s paintings. I followed the truck heading back to PA in a car with our daughter Faith Wise. I remember saying to Faith, “I want to bring Lew’s paintings back here someday. I don’t know how I can make it happen but I want to bring his paintings back home. “
Meeting with the Monmouth Museum staff reminded me of the statement of hope I shared with our daughter Faith years ago: My desire to return Lewis and his paintings home to New Jersey.
It has been a long journey thus far. I now realize it will be a much longer and slower journey to forge. We hope to find other New Jersey galleries and museums willing to welcome the artwork of my late brother Lewis Lanza Rudolph as a result of the summer long exhibit at Monmouth Museum.
It has been quite some time since I shared a blog about my art journey with Lewis. Today I simply want to share with you that the next step in my journey of a Brothers Legacy will indeed be “The Homecoming.”