A native Midwesterner’s timeless portrayals of a fragile sanctuary
The Indiana Dunes Revealed offers the first comprehensive examination of a widely collected, much loved, and ecologically significant artist. Described by art historian William Gerdts as “one of the finest painters working in the Midwest in the first decades of the twentieth century,” Frank V. Dudley (1868-1957) was a native of Wisconsin who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago before going on to establish a long exhibition record both there and across the country. He also dedicated over forty years of his professional life as a landscape painter to the promotion and preservation the Indiana Dunes. Today, thanks in part to Dudley’s efforts, this unique geographical region enjoys state and federal protection and provides ecologists from around the world with a living laboratory unlike anything else.
The Indiana Dunes Revealed serves as the accompanying catalogue for the exhibition of Dudley’s work showing from August 15 to November 30, 2006 at the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University. Featuring 150 color and 70 black-and-white images, it celebrates Dudley’s unique artistic legacy, documents the exhibition, and demonstrates the painter’s importance to environmentalists and naturalists, especially during the many years of national debate over the designation of parts of the dunes as a national park. In some areas, Dudley’s painting may be the only record of a lost dunescape, and as the struggle between development and preservation continues, his enduring art reminds us of the need for a sustainable environment for the Great Lakes.
