Andy Truscott speaks with Molly Giordano and Margaret Winslow about The Delaware Art Museum’s upcoming exhibitions, their work with the Arts Equity and Innovation Incubator, and what success for the museum looks like long term.

Since the Museum’s renovation and expansion in the early 2000s, the contemporary collection has grown rapidly, adding more than 1,000 works by artists such as Tom Otterness, George Rickey, Toshiko Takaezu, Anne Truitt, James Turrell, Jack Whitten, and Peter Williams. In 2008, the Museum was the recipient of a major gift from The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States program. Comprised of 50 works of art by artists such as Lynda Benglis, Robert Mangold, and Richard Tuttle, the gift of conceptual and minimal art strengthened the Museum’s ability to tell the story of contemporary American art. Additionally, the Museum began hosting and organizing more contemporary exhibitions highlighting the work of both regional and national artists, including its popular Outlooks Exhibition Series.

Throughout the last decade, the Museum has been strategically focused on acquiring more works by women artists and artists of color. Recent acquisitions include Chakaia Booker’s One Way (2008), the first sculpture by an African American artist to be added to the Copeland Sculpture Garden, and Hank Willis Thomas’ Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot (2018), a commissioned work that became a catalyst for dialogue during the city-wide reflection on the 1968 occupation of Wilmington by the National Guard. Launched in 2019 with The Loper Tradition: Paintings by Edward Loper, Sr. and Edward Loper, Jr, the Distinguished Artist Series celebrates those artists who have impacted contemporary art in the greater Wilmington area. The Series surveys the artists’ legacies as they relate to local, national, and international artistic trends.

To learn more about the Delaware Art Museum, visit https://delart.org/.