MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE.- Memphis Brooks Museum of Art announces the acquisition of a number of works in recent months representing a broad range of periods, media, and styles. They include oil paintings, watercolors, photography, drawings, sculpture, video, industrial design objects, and fine decorative arts such as silver and cut glass. These important acquisitions add to the Brooks' growing permanent collection of over 8,000 works.

With the addition of these objects, the Brooks has significantly strengthened the museum's holdings in the area of American art. Director Kaywin Feldman remarks, "The Brooks Museum's inaugural exhibition in 1916 displayed works by American artists, including Childe Hassam, Kate Carl, and Frederick J. Waugh. Most of our early exhibitions and acquisitions were dominated by American artists, and the important role of American art continues today."

Included among the American acquisitions is a five-piece silver coffee and tea service by Eoff & Shepherd, circa 1852. A Gift of the Decorative Arts Trust, this coffee and tea service is a superb example of the Chinoiserie style. Meaning literally "Chinese like," the term is used to describe Western decorations based upon Chinese models. Here, the silver maker borrowed images of weeping willows, boats, and pagodas from Chinese art, but also incorporated the unmistakably American image of a log cabin into the scene. The set provides a fine example of the stylistic evolution of American silver from 1770 until 1860.

The Brooks is also pleased to welcome to the collection the addition of two photogravures by the influential early 20th century photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). Stieglitz was a member of the Photo-Secessionists, a group that believed photography was an art form equal to painting. Stieglitz, like his fellow Photo-Secessionists, emphasized the formal qualities of their photographs over the actual subjects, resulting in aesthetically beautiful examples of photography from this period.

Another fine example of American art is an oil painting by Raphael Soyer. Soyer's early work from the 1920s focused on images of urban life and interiors before he became interested in Social Realism in the 1930s. After the 1940s, Soyer concentrated on studies of women at work or posing in a studio. The addition of this painting strengthens the Brooks' holdings of work by Raphael Soyer and his brothers Isaac and Moses.

The recent acquisitions include contemporary work as well, such as a 1995 video project by Christian Marclay titled Telephones. Known for his diverse body of work that explores the relationship between sound and vision, Marclay uses film clips that most viewers can identify, pulling from a shared cultural history. Telephones is an engaging work that compliments the Brooks' Vide-O-Blisk by Nam June Paik and builds upon the museum's video holdings, which have become an important contemporary art form.

Another contemporary addition is a mixed media installation entitled Psalm by Whitfield Lovell. Lovell draws figures taken from anonymous photographs collected at flea markets and antique stores onto old wood. The portraits are combined with household artifacts such as plates, chairs, or frying pans to produce deeply moving and dignified images of African Americans from the Jim Crow era. In Psalm, a woman's head, sketched in charcoal, is blurred and softened, appearing to emanate from the shadows of the wood. Below her, the radio plays a scratchy recording of the 23rd Psalm. Both the wood panel and the radio are worn from use; they evoke nostalgia for the past as well as conveying a sense of history and the traces of the people who used them.

Other important acquisitions in recent months include a collection of industrial design objects, a circa 1650 Dutch etching by Adrien van Ostade, a collection of 139 English satirical prints, and a portfolio of seven signed and numbered colored photographs by the Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi.

Chief Curator Marina Pacini states that "The Brooks is extremely grateful to the many generous donors of the recent group of objects. These new additions make it possible for the museum to better present the history of art to the community. Visitors can see many of these gifts and purchases as they are already on view in the galleries."