FOREWORD

How does a sports medicine physician with no artistic background or talent spearhead an effort to create a museum exhibition and accompanying monograph about the Indiana artist C. Curry Bohm? I believe it goes back to a sunny Sunday afternoon in March 2013. I walked into a bright sunlight drenched gallery where I was instantaneously awestruck by C. Curry Bohm’s Heart of the Village. The painting’s energy, passion, light, and joyful recollection of beautiful sunny fall days immediately struck me with an overwhelming emotional response of happiness that I had never encountered in a painting. If Bohm’s work could elicit that emotional response in me, I believed others in the art community could also enjoy an in depth look at the work of this wonderful Brown County artist. 

With the help of Gregg Hertzlieb, retired curator at the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University, and Indianapolis art dealer Jim Ross, we were able to gather a grassroots group from the Indiana art community to help with the project. This group included art history scholars, museum curators, present day artists, and art collectors who all worked together to create a scholarly and extensive monograph detailing the life and work of Bohm. We also spent years uncovering important and representative works to bring alive the career of C. Curry Bohm. 

This current retrospective exhibition is the fifth and final Indiana venue for C. Curry Bohm: Brown County and Beyond. The works represent the entirety of Bohm’s artistic career. We start with one of his pictorial photographs from the early 1920s and end with works from the last portion of his career in the late 1960s. This exhibition contains 16 of his prize-winning paintings and 22 works that were judged into the historic Hoosier Salon annual exhibition. Of note, both of his Hoosier Salon Best of Show paintings Gray Hills of Winter and Heavy Seas are presented together for the only known time. We have also included representational pieces from seven of Bohm’s contemporary Brown County artists to give a glimpse into the work within the Brown County art colony which so heavily influenced Bohm. 

I believe this exhibition and accompanying monograph are a fine representation of the great passion, energy, and graciousness that abounds within our Indiana art community. I hope you enjoy this look at the life and works of the historic Brown County artist C. Curry Bohm as much as we have while creating C. Curry Bohm: Brown County and Beyond.

Dan Kraft