Joseph Norman Retrospective at the Newport Art Museum

Cover image: Joseph Norman, Portrait of Josh Gibson (Out at Home: Negro Baseball League, Volume I), 1999, Lithograph, 30 x 22 inches, Gift of Barry and Kathleen Hittner, 2000.001.009

Drawing and Painting Professor Joseph Norman will show works held in the permanent collection of the Newport Museum of Art in Newport, Rhode Island alongside new pieces in a retrospective exhibition entitled Joseph Norman: Works from the Permanent Collection. The museum presently houses the largest collection of Norman’s work to date.

Exhibition Dates

October 15, 2022 – April 16, 2023

The retrospective presents a mix of permanent prints and paintings that will be housed at the Newport Art Museum for an extended length of time alongside visiting pieces. Throughout his work, Professor Norman marries techniques in realism and abstraction to depict complex subjects, such as racial identity, portraiture, history, and place. Standout pieces in the exhibition include Professor Normans’s Wandering Muse series, Tenements, and Out at Home: Negro Baseball League. Viewers should also take note of three, rarely seen lithographic triptychs on display. Professor Norman was inspired by personal events, nature, and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis when creating these works.  

Artist Bio

Joseph Norman earned his M.A. at the University of Illinois and an M.F.A. at the University of Cincinnati in 1986. Afterward, he moved to Rhode Island to launch his career. It was at that point that he began teaching and exhibiting at the Newport Art Museum.

Norman serves as a professor of art specializing in drawing and painting at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, where he has also served as the area chair of the drawing and painting department and was founder of study abroad programs in Latin America, namely Cuba, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands. A world-class draftsman and printmaker, he has works of art in museum collections around the country, including the MoMA, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the RISD Museum, among others.