Adding to the Mix 3: Allan Houser’s Next Generation II (1989)

A large-scale bronze sculpture by artist Allan Houser, a promised gift to the Ackland Art Museum, will be permanently displayed on the grounds of the UNC Hospitals complex — close to the entrances of both the N.C. Women’s and Children’s Hospitals — beginning 28 October 2011. Next Generation II is pledged to the Ackland by distinguished UNC alumnus Dr. Hugh A. McAllister Jr., MD ’66, in honor of his father Dr. Hugh A. McAllister Sr., MD ’35. To celebrate the addition of this sculpture to the UNC campus and to the Ackland Art Museum collection, the Ackland is mounting a small exhibition of works that illuminate various aspects of the piece.

Next Generation II, 1989, will be a major addition to the Ackland’s collection of modern American art. Dynamically shifting between solids and voids, Next Generation II suggests the protective pose of a parent and child, as the two abstracted figures bend into one another. Given the title, the two forms may be interpreted as elder and youth, if not parent and child, and the composition may imply the transmission of knowledge and tradition from one generation to the next.

Adding to the Mix 3: Allan Houser’s “Next Generation II” (1989) highlights themes of the transmission of knowledge between generations, as well as American Indian cultural and artistic traditions. Works in the exhibition are as varied as lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton, Oscar Howe, and Robert Rauschenberg, and an 1840 miniature painting from India. Of particular note is Fence, a 2009 print by UNC-Chapel Hill art professor Kimowan Metchewais (1963-2011) recently acquired by the Ackland.

Image: Allan C. Houser, American, Chiricahua Apache, 1914-1994; Next Generation II, 1989; bronze; Promised gift of Hugh A. McAllister Jr., MD ’66 in honor of his father Hugh A. McAllister Sr., MD ’35