The Belger Collection was established to educate the public about the work of artists including, but not exclusive to William Christenberry, Terry Winters, Robert Stackhouse, William T. Wiley, Terry Allen, Renee Stout, and Jasper Johns. The Collection spans their careers allowing study of their work and their creative processes.
b. 1943
Allen is an independent artist and has been described as a Renaissance man working since 1966 in a wide variety of media including musical and theatrical performances, sculpture, painting, drawing and video, and installations which incorporate any and all of these media. Allen is also considered an innovator of the alt-country scene, a musician and songwriter whose songs have been covered by bands like Little Feat, Sturgill Simpson and David Byrne.
1936-2016
William Christenberry was one of the definitive artists of contemporary American art, in content and form. Starting his career in abstract painting, Christenberry later became known as a photographer, and his subsequent works have incorporated printmaking, sculpture, bookmaking and assemblage, all wielded with equal confidence as their discrete forms became necessary to his vision.
b. 1949
The Belger Collection includes prints by Jasper Johns that were collected over a span of 40 years. The prints have been shown around the world. In addition to the earliest prints, among the highlights of is the inclusion of six lead relief prints from 1969-70. Due to the delicate surface, these works are only exhibited at the Belger Arts Center.
b. 1942
Robert Stackhouse
Robert Stackhouse builds his sculptures using common materials: sturdy wooden beams and delicate slats he cuts, nails, and bolts into curving wails, sinuous A-frames and boat-like artifacts. These familiar materials and images turn richly ambiguous as he explores affinities between architecture and biological anatomy.
b. 1958
Renée Stout is a multidisciplinary artist whose prints, drawings, photographs, mixed-media constructions, assemblages, and installations explore identity, spirituality, cultural memory, and contemporary life. Born in Junction City, Kansas, and a 1980 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, Stout began her career creating photorealist paintings of everyday urban neighborhoods. Her practice later expanded through a deep engagement with African and African diasporic traditions, imaginative storytelling, and the symbolic practices associated with divination and healing.
1937-2021
William T. Wiley
Over the course of his career, William T. Wiley (1937-2021) maintained an eclectic practice that has been associated with the Funk Art movement. He pursued artistic expression in almost every conceivable medium: watercolor, painting, collage, found object construction, sculpture, printmaking, music, performance art, theater, and film. His paintings act as an aggregate and are composed of a wide range of obsessive marks, materials, and mediums, frequently layered on top of a map or other information-coded images.
b. 1949
Terry Winters
Terry Winters (b. 1949) is a contemporary American painter and printmaker represented in depth in the Belger Collection. A native New Yorker, Winters graduated from Pratt Institute in 1971, focusing on painting. Through the 1970s, while studying nature, especially molecular-level life forms, Winters honed his craft as a drawer and a painter until he was ready for his inaugural exhibition in 1982 at the prestigious Sonnabend Gallery. Later that same year he began his first foray into printmaking at Universal Limited Art Editions on Long Island.
