About Artists of Toledo - Artists of Toledo

Artists of Toledo is a website by photographer Penny Gentieu

The Blade, March 9, 2021. This is the museum’s 5-year plan, and now we are 3 years into it. This plan says nothing about selling famous paintings, removing the Impressionist paintings from the main building, moving the American art to the back and shaming it, doing a major overhaul on the look and feel of the museum including painting the walls white, moving all of the art around and arranging it in chronological order, relocating the actual Cloister gallery that contains fragile ancient pillars forming walls and built into an ancient floor, moving the glass art from the glass museum and scattering it throughout the museum…

Poets Bob Philips, Nick Muska and Joel Lipman in the museum’s Cloister gallery, 1979 and 2015.

Toledo has a very special artistic history, and that is why I created this website about the Toledo Museum of Art and the historic artists of Toledo.

My mother, Audrey Pinkerton Gentieu (1922-2009) painted from age five until her last week of life, at age 86. This website is for her.

For artistsoftoledo.com’s logo, I used my mother’s painting and placed it on the floor in front of an empty chair, to show how the Toledo Museum of Art was started by artists in 1901. Thomas Parkhurst (1853-1923) described the beginnings this way: one painting and a “filched” chair used by George W. Stevens to entice donors into giving, one by one, until the necessary amount was met to cover operating expenses for the new museum.

The museum has always been free and everyone has always been welcome.

1903 clipping describes groups and departments forming at the Toledo Museum of Art. Immediately after George and Nina Stevens accepted the directorship of the 2-year old museum, their vision for a museum that “took art away from exclusive capitalism and gave it to the people” began to take shape, including progressive plans for community groups and art classes.

Allen Roudolf (d. 2014), collector, with his blue vase with prunts made by Dominick Labino (1910-1987). Scientist and artist, Labino literally melded industry and art. He was a leader of the Studio Glass movement in 1962, inventing many formulations necessary to the process. Labino glass is uniquely organic in shape and color. Baker O’Brien, his apprentice, is the only person who knows his color formulations. His rise to fame in the 60’s and 70s is legendary. He is in the best museum glass collections in the world.