Even the wackiest and quirkiest of art fans will not be expecting the LSU Museum of Art’s newest exhibit, “Hunt Slonem: Antebellum Pop!”
The show is the first full-scale museum exhibition to display not only Slonem’s work, but a recreation of his home, which is characterized by bright colors and classic Antebellum style. Slonem’s expressionist work is displayed throughout the walls, curtains, upholstery and wallpaper of the galleries.
The exhibition opens April 22 and will be on display until August 5.
The exhibition curator, Sarah Clunis, also curated the museum’s contemporary gallery in the recent reinstallation of “Art in Louisiana: Views into the Collection,” and the Haitian exhibit, “The Carnival, the City and the Sea.”
“The idea was to recreate a home of his,” Clunis said. “Every inch of this exposition is really him — it’s not just the paintings on the walls, it’s the wallpaper and the upholstery.”
Slonem’s style of painting is based largely off of his colorful imagination. Repetition is a common theme in his work, especially of birds, butterflies and rabbits.
Slonem has two estates in Louisiana. After the exhibit was planned last summer, Clunis spent the season with the prolific painter in order to better understand his state of mind when she was curating the exhibit.
“That was really important for me, because I was able to get a real feel for his style,” she said.
Clunis said acquiring the featured aspects of the exhibit was a collaboration from a number of different entities. Many of the pieces in the exhibit are loans from Louisiana
Slonem collectors, while others are from Slonem’s personal collection. Much of the antique furniture is borrowed from M.S. Rau Antiques in New Orleans.
All of the linens and antiques used in the display were extremely valuable. Clunis said everything was top drawer throughout the exhibition.
Slonem will attend the opening of the exhibit and give a lecture at the museum on April 21 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Clunis said the project was on a grander scale than anything she had ever done. Each piece presented a challenge she worked through, especially adhering to the artist’s particular style so the exhibition would be as accurate as possible.
“I had to really try to imagine what he would want and stay true to the museum’s best practices because there’s things we have to do according to museum standards,” she said.
Though it turned out differently than she imagined, at the end of the day Clunis said she is satisfied with the result.
“He is a magician. He’s able to turn everything he touches into a beautiful, beautiful creation, and I would love that people could absorb that and feel a little bit like what it is to be him, because he’s not like the rest of us,” Clunis said. “I want them to have that kind of joy that I get and most people get when they look at his work.”
Clunis said she loves Slonem’s work because it takes her out of her world, into an “Alice in Wonderland” playful fantasy world. Clunis wants museum goers to be surprised and happy with the boldness and whimsicality of the exhibition. She wants to bring out the inner child in everyone, as Slonem represents that to her.
“I get liberated by his work, by his color choices, by his style. If we can leave this exhibition a little bit freer in the way we choose color, and the way we choose fabric and the way we look at the world,” the curator said. “We all have this kind of freedom inside of us to be able to create work that talks about our spirit, and he is very spiritual.”

Gallery • 9 Photos

Greta Jines

The "Hunt Slonem: Antebellum Pop!" exhibition will be on display from Friday, April 22, 2016, until Aug. 5, 2016 at the LSU Museum of Art.