BILOXI, MS.- The Dusti Bongé Art Foundation (DBAF/the Foundation) today announced it is publishing a digital catalogue raisonné to enable further research and document Dusti Bongé’s (1903-1993) complete oeuvre on the occasion of the Foundation’s 30th Anniversary. Expected to launch in 2028, the project furthers DBAF’s mission to promote the legacy of the Modernist artist—a native daughter of Biloxi—and her significant contributions to 20th century art.

The publication will include entries and illustrations for each known work, complete descriptive information, and detailed histories of ownership, exhibitions, and literature. It will provide readers with authoritative background information on thousands of artworks by the prolific Bongé, many of which are being published for the first time.

DBAF’s Executive Director Ligia M. Römer, PhD, RA, serves as managing editor and lead contributor, maintaining the publication on behalf of the Foundation. Before being appointed Executive Director, Römer developed a detailed database of all known works in her capacity as the Foundation’s Curator of Collections and Registrar.

Römer said, “This project is a significant next step for the Foundation, building on our projects of the past ten years focusing on research, documentation, publications, and exhibitions. In addition to spotlighting Bongé’s wide-ranging artistic output, providing a digital publication enables us to keep information and entries updated in real time. It is important to our mission that the results are available to all who want to explore her work—from students and scholars to art-lovers and those encountering her for the first time. Installments will be based on distinct periods within Bongé’s six-decade career.”

The catalogue raisonné complements Dusti Bongé, Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York by J. Richard Gruber, PhD, an expansive monograph published in 2019 by the Foundation. Director Emeritus of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Gruber is serving as editorial advisor. Hollis Taggart gallery in New York City, which represents Bongé’s estate, is serving as project collaborator.

About Dusti Bongé

Born in 1903 in Biloxi, Mississippi—a thriving seafood port city and resort destination—Dusti Bongé (née Eunice Lyle Swetman) was the youngest of three children of a prominent banker. After graduating from Blue Mountain College, she moved to Chicago to study acting. In the 1920s, she worked as an actor in Chicago and New York, appearing on stage and in silent films.

In 1928, she married painter Archie Bongé who encouraged her natural abilities as an artist. Their son, Lyle, was born a year later and the family moved to Biloxi in 1934. Archie built a studio in their backyard but succumbed to ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1936. While raising Lyle and grieving for Archie, Dusti Bongé assuaged her grief in the studio and devoted herself to painting.

She initially exhibited in New Orleans and Biloxi until 1939, when her work went on view at the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York City. Her art career advanced dramatically when she joined the roster of the renowned Betty Parsons Gallery in midtown Manhattan. An artist and art dealer, Parsons was an early champion of the New York School and pioneers of Abstract Expressionism which was becoming a leading influence in the art world. In 1956, she received her first solo exhibition at the Gallery, placing her in a select group of artists that included Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. Continuing to be shown at Parsons Gallery until 1976, Bongé was a strong voice in the New York art scene for three decades. Yet, she mostly remained in Biloxi where she continued to produce new work until two years before her death, in 1993.

About the Dusti Bongé Art Foundation

The Dusti Bongé Art Foundation (DBAF/the Foundation) promotes the artistic legacy of Dusti Bongé, Mississippi’s pioneering Abstract Expressionist painter, through exhibitions, conservation, scholarship, and education. Established in 1995 in Biloxi, the artist’s hometown, the organization preserves and promotes her extensive and impressive oeuvre and is dedicated to increasing public awareness of and access to her work.

Since its inception, the Foundation has been engaged in advancing scholarship about the artist and cataloguing and conserving her artworks in its collection. In addition to placing several significant works with national institutions including the Mississippi Museum of Art, Morris Museum of Art, and National Museum of Women in the Arts, DBAF organizes exhibitions and provides loans to art institutions. Its on-site gallery showcases selections of work that explore Bongé’s evolution from her earliest representational landscapes and portraits to experiments with Surrealism to her Abstract Expressionist masterworks. The Foundation’s holdings include an extensive selection of her work in a variety of media, including oil and acrylic paintings, watercolors, pen and ink sketches, mixed media works, tempera on paper, and ceramics.

For more information, please visit dustibonge.org.