The MAC to debut new horse sculpture next week
A new sculpture will be unveiled at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture this week.
The sculpture is by Montana artist Deborah Butterfield and was donated to the MAC by Jim Knox, who recently moved to Spokane from Chicago. The piece will be a part of the permanent collection at the MAC after it is unveiled to the public 11 a.m. Wednesday.
The sculpture, a bronze casting of a horse, was completed in 1996.
Jim Knox acquired the sculpture shortly after it was completed . It has remained in the Knox home.
“This family could have sent this sculpture anywhere, but they decided that the MAC was the place for this piece,” said Sybil MacDonald, a MAC spokesperson. “The MAC is a premiere museum in the region.”
The Butterfield sculpture, which Knox called “Ancient Child,” will be available to view in the lobby of the main floor of the museum. Knox said he and his wife, Rita, were drawn to the piece after seeing other Butterfield sculptures, like the life-sized horses that sit just outside the Portland Airport. The pair enjoyed artwork that was recognizable in form, but still contemporary.
Butterfield crafted the sculpture from driftwood and then casted it in bronze at the Walla Walla Foundry, which is widely recognized as a premiere foundry for contemporary art in the U.S.
“She goes out in the woods in Montana, where she can find interesting pieces of wood around creeks and rivers, and she collects them and forms a figure with them. And then she takes those pieces to Walla Walla to cast it,” Knox said. “Then they take the pieces apart and take those wooden sticks apart piece by piece and cast a bronze copy of it. And then they seal it with a metal primer and paint it.”
Butterfield is known for her sculptures of horses crafted in cast bronze and salvaged materials like scrap metal, mud and clay.
Butterfield’s work is on display across the nation at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.