Author: Lea Rosson DeLong

Publisher: University of South Dakota Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13:

Wilber Moore Stilwell (1908-1974) a 1930's WPA and independent American artist, educator, inventor was nationally one of 25 art educators awarded a gold medal by First Lady Johnson in 1966 at the White House in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, as she noted in her published diary. Stilwell attended the prestigious Kansas City Art Institute and was a contemporary of, a public advocate for and a friend of Thomas Hart Benton. Alison Erazmus , former Director of University Art Galleries at the University of South Dakota wrote "Stilwell completed his master's degree at one of the most important graduate art programs for Regionalist art at the University of Iowa in 1940" before going on to become Chairman of the art department at University of South Dakota for twenty-six years. Before the 1940's, he competed in public art shows earning many awards. After the 1940's he crafted his public artist persona as educator. Before Stilwell died in 1974 at age 66, he worked daily in the privacy of his home on his art. Until 2009 at the "Rediscovered Talent: Exhibition of the Work of Wilber Stilwell" curated by John A. Day at the University of South Dakota, the public was unaware of him being a prolific working artist. The Stilwell collection includes oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, graphite drawings, notes on art education, notes for art manuscripts unpublished, cartoons, invention ideas, original lithographs...thousands of items. Scholar/curator Dr. Lea Rosson DeLong notes: "One of my primary goals in my work on Stilwell, therefore, has been to re-introduce this hitherto under-recognized figure whose life-long production deserves to be recognized and integrated into the art history of his time...His work encompassed a larger range than that [1930's Regionalism]...Though recognized for his contributions to art education, his more enduring legacy may well be those many small landscapes created as he worked alone, studying and recording the American Plains."