Lin Emery (American/Louisiana, born 1928)
Internationally acclaimed sculptor Lin Emery came to New Orleans in 1952 after an apprenticeship in the Paris studio of Ossip Zadkine and attending classes at the New York Sculpture Center. She had her first solo exhibition in 1955 at the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art (now the New Orleans Museum of Art). At this time, there were no commercial art galleries in New Orleans. Ms. Emery played a crucial role in the development of the arts in New Orleans in 1957 when with six other noted local artists – George Dunbar, Shirley Grode, Jack Hastings, Robert Helmer, James Lamantia, and Jean Seidenberg -she founded the Orleans Gallery: the first sustained commercial outlet for contemporary art in the city.
During the late 1950′s and early 1960′s, Ms. Emery developed friendships with noted sculptors George Rickey and Isamu Noguchi. Of Noguchi, Ms. Emery has said she feels closest to his work because “his forms are abstracted from nature in the same way as mine”. Her works are in the collection of many major institutions throughout the world, including, The National Collection of American Art, Washington D. C., The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Weisman Collection, Los Angeles and The Museum of Foreign Art, Sofia, Bulgaria. Her public art commissions include “Honoo-no-ki”, Osaka Dome, Japan, “Hana”, Izumisan City, Japan, “Tree Dance”, Hofstra University, New York and K & B Plaza, New Orleans.
Information courtesy of New Orleans Auction, June 2009.