Bradford House educational space hosts art exhibit
America was facing rough times in the 1930s, and it was at this tough juncture that artist J. Howard Iams decided to look back at another crossroads in the country’s history.
He traveled around the region, looking at structures and sites where individuals associated with the 1790s Whiskey Rebellion lived, or where crucial events in the uprising over a whiskey tax imposed by the federal government unfolded. He eventually created images that found their way into the collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg. But some of Iams’ pencil sketches, block prints and paintings also fell into the hands of George Drobich, a West Bethlehem collector and owner of an antiques shop, and they are being displayed at the Bradford House’s newly opened meeting house in downtown Washington through Saturday, April 15.
Iams was born in Amwell Township in 1897, and honed his skills as an artist by studying in New York and at what is now Carnegie Mellon University. His favorite subjects included dwellings, farms and mills related to the region’s history – one of his paintings, “LeMoyne House,” depicting the downtown Washington home of physician, abolitionist and cremation advocate Francis LeMoyne, was in the White House in the 1930s during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. Some of Iams’ other works have been displayed at or is in the collections of the Chicago Art Institute and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.
The collection of Iams’ work “fits right in” with the Bradford Center’s mission to educate visitors about the Whiskey Rebellion and the years after the United States’ founding, according to Tracie Liberatore, executive director of the Bradford House Historical Association. “It’s a truly impressive collection and people need to see it.”
It will be displayed at 182 S. Main St., in downtown Washington, during the Bradford House’s regular hours, which are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday. For information go online to www.bradfordhouse.org.