C. Curry Bohm: Brown County and Beyond

Born on October 19, 1894, in Nashville, Tennessee, Claude Curry Bohm, or C. Curry Bohm, was the son of a flamboyant muralist and actress. Due to the nature of his father’s work as a muralist and designer of the New Orleans' Mardi Gras festival, Curry grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. As a teenager, Curry’s father passed away and this prompted the Bohm family to move to Louisville, Kentucky. While in Kentucky, Curry worked several jobs, including a stint in a newspaper print shop and a tour along the Ohio River with a small circus. 

At age eighteen, Curry eloped with his sixteen-year-old sweetheart, Lillian, who lied about her age to get a marriage license. After the ceremony, Lillian returned home and Curry went out with friends to celebrate. The couple, winning her parents' approval, went to Chicago so that Curry could study at the Art Institute. After finishing his studies, he went to work as a printer and opened an art studio in Chicago. 

C. Curry Bohm (1894-1971)

For Better, For Worse

Oil on canvas, 36 x 40 inches, 1940

Tri Kappa Purchase Award in the 1942 Hoosier Salon Exhibition

Collection of Tri Kappa housed at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

The Bohms soon heard about Brown County, located in Nashville, Indiana, and in 1920 they began making annual summer visits to Peaceful Valley. Bohm was a charter member of the Brown County Art Gallery Association when it was formed in 1926, but he didn't decide to move to the county permanently until 1932. Lillian worked in Chicago for another two years to provide money while Curry established himself in Nashville, Indiana. When she joined him, their home was a converted cow barn, rented for ten dollars a month. However, in 1947, the couple found a home and reconstructed the barn into an artist studio. Lillian handled exhibitions and sales, leaving Curry free to paint, build frames, and pursue his hobbies.  

Snow scenes became Curry Bohm's trademark. He taught small groups of students in summer and painted the snow scenes in winter. In fall the Bohms went to Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Curry painted along the seacoast. He also painted in his native state of Tennessee and later in Mexico. But his main love was Brown County, and on his travels, he did all he could to encourage other artists to discover the southern Indiana hill country. 

Bohm won esteem for his landscapes on the East Coast as well as in Indiana. In 1940 his snow scene The Grey Blanket was selected to represent the state at the World's Fair in San Francisco and won a bronze medal. He won several awards over three decades at the Hoosier Salon for outstanding landscapes, the Chicago Palette and Chisel Club gold medal in 1931, and the University of Evansville medal of honor in 1970. His paintings are now in many public and private collections around the world. 

Bohm died in Nashville, Indiana on November 18, 1971, not long after holding a solo show at the Brown County Art Guild. He was seventy-seven. His legacy included a surprise: late in his career, this man who often expressed negative opinions about modern art had produced several abstract paintings. No one knows why, but fellow artists suggested that it may have been Curry's way of having the last word in his ongoing feud with fellow Hoosier Group artist, George "Jack" LaChance. Jack hated modern art even more than Curry. 

Tory Schendel Cox 

The Virginia G. Schroeder Curator of Art 

Source: Letsinger-Miller, Lyn. The Artists of Brown County. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994.