Large-Scale Imagery Installed in Public Spaces Represent Museum’s Pre-Raphaelite Collection
The Delaware Art Museum has partnered with Wilmington City Councilperson Nathan Field on a mural project, “Nature’s Palette,” with images and words inspired by nature. The works will be on view throughout City Council District 8 beginning in June through the remainder of 2023.
They will be installed throughout the built environment of District 8 in the following locations:
- Gilpin Liquors
- Luther Towers
- BrewHaHa Trolley Square
- The intersection of Delaware Avenue and Dupont Street
- Lincoln Towers
- Southeast Kitchen
- Joseph E. Johnson Jr. School
- The intersection of Pennsylvania and Greenhill Avenues outside the Marian Coffin Garden
The Museum is situated in the center of District 8, which begins at the western border of Wilmington that wraps around Rockford Park, and ends just east of Cool Spring Park, with its northern and southern borders defined by Brandywine Park and Wawaset Park, so the murals are all in the general Museum vicinity.
District 8 Councilperson Nathan Field says, “I’m incredibly excited to work with the Art Museum team to grow the City of Wilmington as an Artistic and Cultural destination not just in the First State of Delaware but throughout the extended Tri-State region. Walking around the neighborhood and seeing scenes from nature that are so culturally meaningful to Delawareans integrated into the streetscape is so thrilling.”
“Nature’s Palette” features enlarged intricate and vibrant details of paintings and drawings from DelArt’s Pre-Raphaelite collection, combined with quotations inspired by nature and poetry penned by Victorian-era writers.
Sophie Lynford, Annette Woolard-Provine Curator of the Bancroft Collection, says, “Pre-Raphaelite artists lamented that nineteenth-century industrialization was destroying both natural and historic landmarks. These concerns remain urgent today.”
The murals include Pre-Raphaelite works by artists Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Walter Crane, Henry Farrer, George James Howard, John Everett Millais, and William Henry Millais. Paired with these are quotations from authors Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Felicia Hemans, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Ruskin.
Margaret Winslow, Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art, says, “The Pre-Raphaelite collection is a much-loved core of the Delaware Art Museum. These works of art have inspired generations of artists and art lovers throughout the greater Wilmington community and across the United States.”
Throughout 2023, the Delaware Art Museum is celebrating the “Year of Pre-Raphaelites,” which began in late 2022 with the special loan exhibition, “A Marriage of Arts and Crafts: Evelyn and William De Morgan” and the collections show, “Forgotten Pre-Raphaelites.” The celebration continues in fall 2023, with DelArt hosting the only U.S. appearance of “The Rossettis,” a major international exhibition organized in partnership with Tate Britain, on view from October 21, 2023 through January 28, 2024. A “Pre-Raphaelite Weekend,” co-hosted by the Pre-Raphaelite Society, based in the U.K., will take place from November 9 through November 12, 2023.
“Nature’s Palette” is supported by Nathan Field, 8th District Council Member. This organization is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.
Top: November Landscape, 1883. Henry Farrer (1844–1903). Watercolor on paper, sheet: 6 5/8 × 10 7/8 inches. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of David A. Hanks in memory of Elizabeth Dixon Hanks, 2003.