Authorities on Work

George R. Anthonisen’s public works are in permanent collections of the U. S. Capitol (Capitol Visitors Center, Emancipation Hall), Washington, DC; World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland; New York’s Carnegie Hall (Shorin Club Room); Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Maryland; in Philadelphia at Please Touch Museum, Woodmere Art Museum and Curtis Institute of Music; James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Berman Museum of Art, Collegeville, Pennsylvania; Center for Interfaith Relations, Louisville, Kentucky; Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia; University of Alaska at Fairbanks…and others.

There is no such thing as a casual stroll past a George Anthonisen sculpture. You see it, feel it, react to it, contemplate it, analyze it ⎯ often you are startled; with a gesture, a facial expression. Anthonisen presents us with both information and questions. He addresses issues in his work that are universally understood. We all approach an image with our own body of experiences to inform our perception of it; yet somehow Anthonisen succeeds in capturing a moment that enables each of us to reach the same conclusion about its intent, regardless of how we worked our way to that point.

Lisa Tremper Hanover, Former Director/CEO, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Former Director, Berman Museum of Art Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania

Anthonisen’s images both engage and express the totality of the human person ⎯ body, mind, and spirit. While they are vehicles of cultural, social, and moral commentary, they are marvels of formal conception and design. Moreover, in celebrating humanity and life, Anthonisen’s images ennoble anew the venerable traditions throughout the history of art in which conception and execution, art and craft, are inseparable.

Donald Martin Reynolds, Ph.D., Art Historian and Author, New York City, New York

George’s images are unified in that they all deal primarily with the immutable essence of the individual person, the family, and human society in a changing world. I am an admirer both of George as a person and of his sculpture, the proof of which is that I have his works in my collection

The late H.F.(Gerry) Lenfest, Chairman, Lenfest Foundation, Former Chair, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia; Former Chair, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The artist seems to say that art exists to make the world more beautiful, that it tests our capacities for thinking and feeling, and that, most importantly, it challenges us to empathize with a world that exists around us, with people who have experienced sufferings and joys we will never know. Anthonisen’s art is to make people look at each other and to see themselves.

John Zarobell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Program Chair for European Studies at University of San Francisco, California; Former Associate Curator, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Former Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture before 1900, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum

Anthonisen’s sculpture calls up alternately the dark and diabolical character of man, as well as the humanistic qualities that define man’s civilized nature. His works are endowed with levels of meaning that challenge the viewer’s sense of discovery. One of America’s outstanding figurative sculptors, The Philadelphia area is fortunate indeed to list him among the stellar talents that have emanated from its fertile artistic soil

Michael W. Schantz, Ph.D., Former  Director/CEO Hecksher Museum, Huntington, NY; Former Director, CEO, and Chief Curator Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

George’s art has been a struggle for responsibility. He returns again and again to the good and evil that coexist in each of us, to the choices we face and can hardly bear. His work took shape during the Cold War, and he evokes suffering and choice in a range of idioms: the Holocaust via the Burghers of Calais, the bereft mother via Kathe Kollwitz. It is shaped by a compassion as old as Western man. Yet it is more topical than ever in our world of Rwanda and Kosovo and Iraq. George tells us that we must bear our choices, and that we can.

Thomas W. Simons, Jr., Ph.D.,Visiting scholar, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland and Pakistan

Authorities on Work

George R. Anthonisen’s public works are in permanent collections of the U. S. Capitol (Capitol Visitors Center, Emancipation Hall), Washington, DC; World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland; New York’s Carnegie Hall (Shorin Club Room); Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Maryland; in Philadelphia at Please Touch Museum, Woodmere Art Museum and Curtis Institute of Music; James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Berman Museum of Art, Collegeville, Pennsylvania; Center for Interfaith Relations, Louisville, Kentucky; Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia; University of Alaska at Fairbanks…and others.

There is no such thing as a casual stroll past a George Anthonisen sculpture. You see it, feel it, react to it, contemplate it, analyze it ⎯ often you are startled; with a gesture, a facial expression. Anthonisen presents us with both information and questions. He addresses issues in his work that are universally understood. We all approach an image with our own body of experiences to inform our perception of it; yet somehow Anthonisen succeeds in capturing a moment that enables each of us to reach the same conclusion about its intent, regardless of how we worked our way to that point.

Lisa Tremper Hanover, Former Director/CEO, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Former Director, Berman Museum of Art Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania

Anthonisen’s images both engage and express the totality of the human person ⎯ body, mind, and spirit. While they are vehicles of cultural, social, and moral commentary, they are marvels of formal conception and design. Moreover, in celebrating humanity and life, Anthonisen’s images ennoble anew the venerable traditions throughout the history of art in which conception and execution, art and craft, are inseparable.

Donald Martin Reynolds, Ph.D., Art Historian and Author, New York City, New York

George’s images are unified in that they all deal primarily with the immutable essence of the individual person, the family, and human society in a changing world. I am an admirer both of George as a person and of his sculpture, the proof of which is that I have his works in my collection

The late H.F.(Gerry) Lenfest, Chairman, Lenfest Foundation, Former Chair, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia; Former Chair, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The artist seems to say that art exists to make the world more beautiful, that it tests our capacities for thinking and feeling, and that, most importantly, it challenges us to empathize with a world that exists around us, with people who have experienced sufferings and joys we will never know. Anthonisen’s art is to make people look at each other and to see themselves.

John Zarobell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Program Chair for European Studies at University of San Francisco, California; Former Associate Curator, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Former Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture before 1900, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum

Anthonisen’s sculpture calls up alternately the dark and diabolical character of man, as well as the humanistic qualities that define man’s civilized nature. His works are endowed with levels of meaning that challenge the viewer’s sense of discovery. One of America’s outstanding figurative sculptors, The Philadelphia area is fortunate indeed to list him among the stellar talents that have emanated from its fertile artistic soil

Michael W. Schantz, Ph.D., Former  Director/CEO Hecksher Museum, Huntington, NY; Former Director, CEO, and Chief Curator Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

George’s art has been a struggle for responsibility. He returns again and again to the good and evil that coexist in each of us, to the choices we face and can hardly bear. His work took shape during the Cold War, and he evokes suffering and choice in a range of idioms: the Holocaust via the Burghers of Calais, the bereft mother via Kathe Kollwitz. It is shaped by a compassion as old as Western man. Yet it is more topical than ever in our world of Rwanda and Kosovo and Iraq. George tells us that we must bear our choices, and that we can.

Thomas W. Simons, Jr., Ph.D.,Visiting scholar, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland and Pakistan