Myrna Báez: Suspended Time

This exhibition celebrates the recent gift of ten silkscreen and woodcut prints by Myrna Báez from the artist’s estate to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA). Báez, one of the most important artists in Puerto Rico during the second half of the twentieth century, expanded the genre of portraiture while revising the island’s landscape tradition. The six works on view in Tiempo suspendido/ Suspended time are from the 1950s and 80s. They speak intimately of contemplation and self-reflection on the threshold of Puerto Rico’s dramatic flora, terrain, and skies. Báez uses windows, mirrors, and the interplay between exterior and interior both as reflections of reality and projections of the imagination. This exhibition highlights the seminal concerns in Báez’s work—the relation between figure and landscape in moments of stillness and solitude; nuances of light and color that suggest a specific time of day, mood, and climactic condition on the island; national identity and self-definition; and the female nude in the history of Western art.