Latent Emissions, Chakaia Booker
Richard Hunt, The Chase, 1965
Richard Hunt (American, b. 1935), The Chase, 1965, welded steel, 44.625 x 66.5 x 52.5 inches. Acquired with funds provided by the Rev. Anthony J. Lauck, C.S.C., Sculpture Endowment and the Humana Foundation Endowment for American Art, 2015.005
The Chase represents artist Richard Hunt at his early best, when he combined interests in Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, African art, assemblage sculpture, industrial materials, nature, and mythology (he indicates The Chase has roots in the story of Diana and Actaeon).
Richard Hunt’s career began in the 1950s with his remarkable achievements while a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, when his student work was exhibited in New York galleries and acquired by The Museum of Modern Art. In his thirty-sixth year (1971), The Chase was exhibited within a one-man exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. He continues to work today, at age 80, as one of our nation’s most successful public artists and with 2015 exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Snite Museum of Art founding director Rev. Anthony J. Lauck, C.S.C., organized one of Richard Hunt’s earliest one-person museum exhibitions in 1966. Thirty years later, in 1996, under the leadership of Emeritus Director Dean A Porter, the Snite Museum organized a second exhibition of his artwork entitled Richard Hunt: Growing Forward, which travelled to the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2012, Director Charles Loving published a collection catalog of the Museum’s Richard Hunt Sculpture Archive, entitled Richard Hunt: Extending Form. The Snite Museum owns eight of his sculptures and four works on paper. His Maquette for Wing Generator, 1982/2010, has been exhibited within the Notre Dame Sculpture Park and other sculptures are on view within the Museum’s American gallery.