The North Dakota Museum of Art has acquired one of the paintings from its current exhibit, a 2010 oil-on-wood panel by Margaret Wall-Romana, in memory of Jean Dean Holland, a long-time museum benefactor and volunteer.
Paintings by Wall-Romana, an artist originally from the San Francisco Bay area who now lives in Minneapolis, are on display through Oct. 23 in the Jean Dean Holland gallery at North Dakota Museum on the UND campus.
Wall-Romana has a passion for gardening and upon moving to Minneapolis found it difficult to paint year-round in her garden, a news release from NDMOA said. So she began both photographing and collecting plants in various stages of life and decay. From these specimens, photographs and observations, she created a series of large, vibrant paintings making up the current exhibit, "Taking Time."
The painting that is being acquired is Wall-Romana's "Memento Lucen (Remember the Light)." It is a subject appropriate for Holland's memory, Museum Director Laurel Reuter said.
"Jean came from a family of painters and she loved beautiful paintings," Reuter said. "Her father's paintings had pride-of-place on her apartment walls where they hung next to those by such North Dakota artists as the late Helgi Ederstrom and Adam Kemp. Both Helgi and Adam were her friends. Jean would be thrilled to know she added this important Margaret Wall-Romana painting to the museum's collection, paying for it in part with memorials from her friends."
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Holland, who was 87 when she died April 10 in Grand Forks, helped build the pathology department at UND and loved art and the opera. Her contributions to the North Dakota Museum of Art helped it through the lean years after the 1997 flood.
The North Dakota Museum of Art is located on Centennial Drive at UND. It is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and weekends from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is a suggested donation of $5 for adults and change from children. Info: (701) 777-4195; www.ndmoa.com.
