CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS.- The Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion presents Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse through January 2, 2005. The lives and work of Bill Traylor and William Edmondson share fascinating parallels despite a twenty-year age gap and the fact that they never met. Both were born into poverty in the South and began creating art as older men after working for decades as physical laborers. Traylor drew and painted at a busy street corner in downtown Montgomery while Edmondson began carving in his Nashville yard in 1931. Although well known in their respective African-American communities, it was contemporary photographers that brought their work to the attention of museum curators. In 1937 Edmondson was the first African-American artist to have a one-man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Three years later, Traylor had a one-man exhibition in Alabama followed by another in Riverdale, New York.

Traylor, a draftsman, and Edmondson, a sculptor, both created figurative work inspired by their surroundings or people they knew, and employed abstract forms and simplified compositions. By displaying their art together, this exhibition examines the aesthetic connections between their works within the framework of modernism. Drawn from private collections and museums across the country, this exhibition includes over fifty drawings and paintings made by Traylor, and twenty five sculptures by Edmondson, along with photographs of them by their contemporaries. The exhibition opens at Krannert Art Museum before traveling to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. Curators: Josef Helfenstein and Roxanne Stanulis. Exhibition sponsored in part by A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.; Fox Development Corporation; Hampton Inn; Hickory Point Bank & Trust; Illinois Arts Council; Krannert Art Museum Council; Ruth and Bob Vogele.