Stilwell, who joined the USD faculty immediately after receiving his master's degree from the University of Iowa in 1941, served on the department of art faculty at The U for 32 years and as department chair for 26 years. The show represents a comprehensive selection of his life's work. "Rediscovered Talent" includes more than 40 paintings, prints and drawings. The show will be accompanied by a full catalogue with essays on the artist's life and his place in American art of the 1930s and 1940s. Plans are being developed to tour the exhibition throughout the Midwest to help bring greater public attention to the special talents of this remarkable artist and to the contribution of New Deal art in general.

Eddie Welch, director of the University Art Galleries, said the Stilwell Retrospective Exhibition was organized to emphasize Stilwell's talent as an artist and to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the art programs of the New Deal — a 10-year period when American art became the art of the people.

Prior to entering graduate school, Stilwell studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute for five years and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education at Emporia State Teachers College in Kansas. These studies coincided with the golden age of the American Scene or Regionalist art movement, and Stilwell partook deeply of the spirit and character of American art during the Depression Era. While at the Kansas City Art Institute, he worked with Thomas Hart Benton and, at the University of Iowa, he studied in the shadow of Grant Wood and other major Regionalists. For his efforts, Stilwell was recognized with a number of prestigious awards, including the National Gallery of Art Medal for Distinguished Service to Education presented at the White House in 1966.

Stilwell is known to many at USD today mainly as the namesake of the annual Stilwell Student Awards Exhibition, according to Cory Knedler, chair of the USD Department of Art. This exhibition is supported by an endowment established in l987.

The Main Gallery in the Warren M. Lee Center for the Fine Arts is open at no cost to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and from 1 to 5 p.m. on weekends. Tours and special showings during non-public hours are available upon request. For more information about this exhibition, please contact the Art Galleries Director Eddie Welch at (605) 677-3177 or e-mail eddie.welch@usd.edu

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