This exhibition brings together a group of extraordinary objects from two private collections in St. Louis. Both Rick Ege and John Foster are known individually for their exceptional eye for collecting unique and wondrous objects. This exhibit brings together rare works from their collections by American folk and outsider artists like Clarence and Grace Woolsey, Lee Godie, George Widener, Howard Finster, Henry Ray Clark and many others, as well as unique found objects and works by anonymous visionary artists, such as a sculptural bucket spiked with bolts used to clean chimneys or the carved bust of an African-American, which encourage us to rethink what art can be.

Originally from rural Missouri, Rick Ege has been collecting since he was a child and has never lost his curiosity for unique objects. Today, he searches for objects made by anonymous individuals for personal or religious use, which have an unconscious expression of artistic strength. Ege is proprietor of R. Ege Antiques, a multiple award-winning shop in St. Louis, and has participated in nationally-recognized antique shows for over 25 years. John Foster has been collecting art since 1972. Since then, his collecting has been largely driven by his passion for surrounding himself with "objects of great mystery and design." Foster makes no distinction as to whether an object is anonymous or by a named artist, but instead seeks quality and meaning. Foster was named one of the "Top 100 Collectors in the United States" by Art & Antiquesi> magazine in 2005. He is a graphic designer and currently works as Director of Business Development at TOKY Branding + Design. The Sheldon Art Galleries featured a large selection of found photographs from his collection in 2005.

This exhibition is part of the American Arts Experience-St. Louis.

Jazz in New York – A Community of Visions is a study of visual urban anthropology and documents how the jazz community lives in New York City today. Using the aesthetic of "environmental portraiture" Delgado uses a large-format camera to capture in spectacular detail the musician and their home environment. This group of photographs celebrates the vibrant community of jazz active in New York today. Included in the exhibition of nearly 50 photographs are Marcus and E.J. Strickland, David Sanborn, Billy Taylor, Wycliffe Gordon, Christian McBride, Larry Grenadier, Ron Carter, Chico Hamilton, Ingrid Jensen, Luciana Souza, Regina Carter, Marcus Rojas, Pablo Mayor, Anna Povich, Stanley Crouch, and many others.

Lourdes Delgado works as an independent photographer and is based in Spain. Her work has appeared in Blue Note, Downbeat, Elle, GQ, Newsweek, People, Rolling Stone, Stern, Verve, Who Weekly and Woman, among other international publications, and her sitters have included Hillary Clinton, Antonio Banderas, Bono, Brad Mehldau, Viggo Mortensen, and Tom Wolfe, among many others. Her personal work has been shown nationally in one-person and group exhibitions at venues including the Knitting Factory, New York; Minot State University, North Dakota; Brooklyn Public Library; the Oconee Arts Foundation, Georgia; and Eastern New Mexico University.

This exhibition is part of the American Arts Experience-St. Louis.

Seminal works by renowned photographers Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, and Brett Weston, including several spectacular large-scale prints by Ansel Adams – among them Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941– as well as Edward Weston’s iconic Pepper, 1930, and examples of Imogen Cunningham’s beautiful and sculptural flower closeups are shown in this exhibition alongside rarely seen works by the artists, all drawn from the Bank of America collection.

Founded in 1934 by Willard Van Dyke and Ansel Adams, the informal Group f.64 were devoted to exhibiting and promoting a new direction in photography. The group was established as a response to Pictorialism, a popular movement on the West Coast, which favored painterly, hand-manipulated, soft-focus prints, often made on textured papers. Feeling that photography’s greatest strength was its ability to create images with precise sharpness, Group f.64 adhered to a philosophy that photography is only valid when it is “straight,” or unaltered. The term f.64 refers to the smallest aperture setting on a large format camera, which allows for the greatest depth of field and sharpest image.

This exhibition is part of the American Arts Experience-St. Louis.

This exhibition is provided by Bank of America Art in our Communities^TM program.

Drawn from the Bank of America collection, this exhibition offers a unique opportunity to see some of the great architectural works built across America and the cities for which they are an integral part. Photographers included are Berenice Abbott: Harold Allen; Bill Hedrich, Ken Hedrich and Hube Henry of the Hedrich-Blessing Studio; Richard Nickel; and John Szarkowski. It is through photographs that most of us have come to know major works of architecture. Our experience of great architecture is often not at the building’s actual site, but rather through a two-dimensional photographic rendering of it. In fact, for many buildings, photographs are all that remain. The term, "architectural photography" is widely used and generally understood to describe pictures through which the photographer documents and depicts a building in factual terms. However the artists featured in this exhibition have taken architectural photography beyond its informative purpose and have shown us the importance of architecture in the definition of the urban American landscape.

This exhibition is part of the American Arts Experience-St. Louis.

This exhibition is provided by Bank of America Art in our Communities^TM program.

The not-for-profit art jobs program for teens, St. Louis ArtWorks, shows two architectural projects on which their students worked in 2009 and 2010. Drawings and models for two projects, which include a watershed design project for North Riverfront Park, and a design project for Ruth Porter Park in St. Vincent Greenway re-using current park site materials, will be on view. In Fall 2009, ArtWorks' teen apprentices participated in a groundbreaking public art collaboration with New York eco-artist Jackie Brookner, The Confluence, and graduate students from Washington University's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Apprentices worked with local artist Kevin McCoy and architect Tebogo Schultz to develop concepts for a public artwork for North Riverfront Park. In the summer of 2010, eighteen ArtWorks teen apprentices worked with two local professional artists, Tebogo Schultz and Chelsey Bence, to design an environmentally friendly work of art for Ruth Porter Park. The design focused on incorporating the re-use of materials currently in the park that will be removed during the park's renovation. Apprentices met with the staff of the Great Rivers Greenway to learn the history of the park, and the St. Vincent Greenway to understand the goals of the final design commission.

This exhibition is part of the American Arts Experience-St. Louis.

Curated by former gallery-owner and entrepreneur Lynn Friedman Hamilton, this invitational exhibition features work in all media by 40 St. Louis-area artists, including Kent Addison; Leon Anderson; Elaine Blatt; Ed Boccia; Ginger Carter; Phillip Dennis, D.D.S.; David Durham; Phillip Hampton; Lloyd Kleine Harvey; Sheldon Helfman; Gene Hoefel; Marjorie Hoeltzel; Barbara Holtz; Lucian Krukowski; Leslie Laskey; Antonio Longrais, M.D.; Peter Marcus; Suzanne Marshall; Mimi Mednikow; Robert Pettus; Hal Poth; Frank Schwaiger; Martin Schweig; Peter Shank; Barbara Simon; Linda Skrainka; Bob Smith; Sun Smith-Foret; Mary Sprague; Mary King Swayzee; Connie Swinson; Arthur Towada; Robert Walker; Ken Worley; and Razine (Rae) Wenneker; and others. A special tribute will be made to the late Patricia Degener, who had planned to write an essay for the accompanying catalogue. Aside from celebrating the remarkable talent of St. Louis-area visual artists over 70, the exhibition, through its accompanying catalogue and educational programs, will offer new ways of thinking about aging and the creative process.

Docent-led tours for groups of 10 or more will be available free of charge during the exhibition and can be scheduled by calling Lynn Hamilton at 314.420.1444.

This exhibition is part of the American Arts Experience-St. Louis.

Gallery Talk: Tuesday, October 12, 6 – 7 p.m., Brian D. Carpenter, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis and catalogue essayist will speak on "The Science (and Art) of Studying Later Life Creativity," Sheldon Concert Hall, admission free.

This exhibition is made possible in part by Peggy Walter Symes, The Delmar Gardens Family, The Hallmark Creve Coeur, Brookdale Senior Living, and the Missouri Arts Council.

Re/Collecti> is a collaborative piece by artist Cheryl Wassenaar and poet Stephanie Schlaifer. For this site-specific installation on the windows of the sculpture garden, Wassenaar uses a variety of typefaces and colors to create poetic visual works. Included in the group is a "found poem," which was created entirely from fragments of 19th-century newspaper accounts of regional storms. Wassenaar recomposes the poems' text in cut vinyl lettering on the atrium and reception hall windows, creating a dynamic visual interpretation of the text's powerful images. The work also beautifully incorporates the reflections and light effects that occur naturally when viewing the windows.

Cheryl Wassenaar's work explores the function of text in a hybrid practice of painting, sculpture, and design. She is Associate Professor in the College of Art at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Stephanie E. Schlaifer works as an artist and freelance editor in St. Louis, Missouri. Her current projects include a series of poems about weather and a collection of children's books in verse.

This exhibition is part of the American Arts Experience-St. Louis.