Durand was passionate about nature, it made him fundamentally happy to be in it, of it, to look at it, absorb it, paint it. For Durand, painting nature was a form of self-expression, communicating

In an interview in 1977, Marjorie’s sister Gwendoline said of Marjorie that “she wanted to be a sculptor since kindergarten when she first worked with colored clay. Daddy was so proud of everything she did.”

The Violinist is also a rather dramatic illustration of the value of proper conservation of any work of art. As had been the practice for hundreds of years and

Here is the painter of the works of Grandfather Mountain and the Grand Canyon that will be featured in the big HMA exhibit December 8, 2018 - April 20, 2019

The painting was presented anonymously to … the most inspiring art museum I know, that specializes in competent American art since 1850 – the Hickory Museum of Art. Its director, Paul W, Whitener, as honest as Lincoln, I think of as

Supposedly A. Alex Shuford said to Paul Whitener in March 1944 that “If you’re going to have a museum, you’ve got to have paintings”; and then

"The importance of art in awakening a sense of the appreciation of beauty cannot be measured. Even meager training in Art opens the eyes. Nothing is ever quite the same once you have learned enough about art to see the color variations in the trees, or the clouds – why,” he said, smiling broadly, “suddenly you realize there’s more beauty in one day than you could exhaust in a century.“

Hickory native and entrepreneur Laura Lee Wilfong was one of the local people who supported the start-up and early days of Hickory Museum of Art in a variety of ways.

Teacher, mentor, friend, benefactor: Wilford Conrow was all those things to Paul Whitener, HMA’s founder. Conrow was an instrumental part of HMA’s beginnings and early days.

Frank Stanley Herring was a friend of the family of Mickey Coe (Mildred McKinney, Paul Whitener’s future wife) and his first paintings of that family was of Mickey and two of her sisters. From left to right, with approximate ages, are