UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.- The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State announced its summer 2018 exhibition schedule. This summer, the museum will present recent large-scale paintings by contemporary artist Julie Heffernan, as well as exhibitions drawn from the museum’s permanent collection including a display of documentary and modernist photographs of the city, and a selection of posters from the golden age of American poster art.

When the Water Rises: Recent Paintings by Julie Heffernan July 10–September 2, 2018
The Palmer’s major exhibition for summer 2018 highlights a selection of monumental canvases by contemporary artist Julie Heffernan, a former professor of painting at Penn State. In When the Water Rises: Recent Paintings by Julie Heffernan, the artist explores her personal response to the dilemma and threat of climate change. Intricately wrought and meticulously detailed, the narrative paintings begin the conversation about how humans might adapt to vastly different climactic conditions or environmental disasters through imaginative scenarios and alternative habitats.

A professor of fine arts at Montclair State University, Heffernan received her M.F.A. in painting from Yale University and is represented by P.P.O.W. in New York and the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. Her work is represented in many major museum collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, McNay Art Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Palmer Museum of Art.

When the Water Rises was organized by the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Framing the City: Photographs from the Permanent Collection June 5–August 19, 2018
Photographers have long turned their cameras on the city, capturing its soaring architecture and diverse populations from unexpected vantage points and perspectives. Spanning an entire century, the thirtyfive works on view in Framing the City trace trends in documentary and modernist photography from across the globe. The exhibition offers glimpses of urban centers ranging from New York and Pittsburgh to Paris and Moscow and features views of people, goods, and cultures in flux as captured by numerous photographers who have endeavored to frame the city and its inhabitants.

Drawn from the Palmer’s permanent collection, the exhibition includes photographs by Lewis Hine, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Charles Sheeler, Berenice Abbott, Frank Paulin, Elliott Erwitt, Larry Fink, Andy Warhol, and many others.

This exhibition was organized by the Palmer Museum of Art.

American Art Posters of the 1890s May 22–August 19, 2018
Around the turn of the twentieth century, colorful, eye-catching posters swept the country in what was dubbed “the poster craze.” Bright placards in windows and on newsstands advertised periodicals to a growing middle-class readership as artistdesigners transformed the look of the advertising poster during the 1890s. More than a dozen American art posters are on view in this intimate exhibition drawn entirely from the Palmer’s permanent collection.

The show features numerous posters by artistillustrator Edward Penfield, whose bold graphic style exemplifies the art poster aesthetic. Also included are works by several of his peers, including William H. Bradley, William Carqueville, and Ethel Reed.

This exhibition was organized by the Palmer Museum of Art.