Three solo exhibits come to the Montana Museum of Art and Culture

The University of Montana will offer solo exhibitions by three of the state’s top artists this fall at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture. 

“This line-up of solo shows, featuring Sara Mast, Manette Rene Bradford and Rand Robbin, represents the cutting edge of art in the state and a look back at our strongest traditions,” said museum Director Rafael Chacón. 

The first exhibition, Standing in the River, opens to the public with a free reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 16, in the museum’s Patricia Payne Gallery. The opening will be preceded by a museum member preview from noon to 2 p.m. Oct. 15. There is a catalog available for purchase with this exhibition. 

Mast’s dramatic and immersive exhibition features more than a dozen recent paintings and glass sculptures, which Chacón describes as a meeting place between art and nature. Her large-scale, abstract paintings are in dialogue with sculptures that appear to be obsidian stones set on slim metal rods. These “stones” are made of PEM glass, produced from recycled materials created under heat and pressure to form shimmering, rock-like objects. 

The second exhibition of the season, Unsettled Lands, introduces Bradford’s art to western Montana. It will include collage drawings and sculptures that unite the landscape and human figure. Bradford draws, tears and paints cut images produced on dry or wet media to compose large-scale, evocative drawings that envelope the viewer. In her sculptural tableaus, human figures merge with familiar mountain landscapes in a tense symbiosis. 

Unsettled Lands opens with a free public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Nov. 13. Bradford will give a talk in the museum’s Nancy Erickson and Michele and Loren Hansen Galleries from 6 to 7 p.m. A member preview will take place from noon to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12. 

The final exhibition of the season is Rand Robbin, which features the graphic and sculptural work of the artist, who died in September 2024. Robbin, a university alumnus from the Flathead Valley, is celebrated for his life of cattle ranching, artmaking and writing. Largely unseen and unrecognized for most of his life, modernist Robbin was a prolific printmaker, sculptor and writer. 

Robbin graduated from the University of Montana with a bachelor’s and master's degrees in art and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking in 1969. He retired from teaching art and art history at Skagit Valley Community College in 1974 and returned to the Robbin Hereford Ranch in Creston to ranch and make art. 

His often whimsical and satirical works are included in the Library of Congress and National Gallery of Art, as well as the Seattle Art Museum and Canton Museum of Art, among others. His book, “Man from Rose Creek: My Life and Other Stories Too Good to be True,” is a mixture of local history, family lore, memories, poetry and photographs of life in early Bigfork, as well as selected artworks. 

Robbin’s exhibition opens with a free public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Dec. 4. Jennifer Li, director of the Wanda Hollensteiner Art Gallery at Flathead Valley Community College, will speak in the museum’s Joseph and Lana Richards Batts Gallery about Robbin’s life and work from 6 to 7 p.m. 

The museum is located on the university campus, 795 S. Fifth St. E., Missoula. 

For more information, email Tracy Hall at [email protected] or call 243-2019. 

  

    “Forest,” a 2022 painting by Sara Mast using oil, a pigment stick and cold wax on repurposed canvas. Her work will be exhibited at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture in Missoula this month. (Courtesy photo)
  

 “Untitled Landscape 3,” an undated stoneware piece by Manette Rene Bradford created using acrylic and watercolor. Bradford's work will be on display at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture on the University of Montana campus in a November exhibit. (Courtesy photo)