Richmond-Moll organizes Oakley exhibition

Graduate student Jeff Richmond-Moll was the 2013 Alfred Appel, Jr. Curatorial Fellow at the Delaware Art Museum, where he organized an exhibition on the American artist Violet Oakley (1874-1961). During World War II, Oakley collaborated with the Citizens Committee of the Army and Navy to produce portable altarpieces for use on American battleships, military bases, and airfields around the world. The Angel of Victory, now in the Museum's permanent collection, was the first of her twenty-five wartime altarpieces, completed just two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This exhibition reunites this altarpiece with preliminary studies for the project for the first time. It also explores Oakley's unique creative process, and reveals how she responded to a volatile moment in world history by infusing her religious works with a democratic spirit and her lifelong belief in peace. "'Blessed are the Peacemakers': Violet Oakley's The Angel of Victory (1941)" runs from February 8 to May 25, 2014.