Spokane Art Center | Students | Jane Baldwin (Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper)

Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper

Spokane Art Center : Students : Jane Baldwin

Name: Jane Baldwin

Born: 1908

Died: 1991

Nationality: American

Affiliations: Spokane Art Center and Washington State College Extension Program

Jane Dunning Baldwin graduated from Spokane's Lewis & Clark High School and studied art at Washington State College. After completing her B.F.A., Baldwin moved to San Francisco, where she lived for two and a half years. She returned to Spokane and became instrumental in promoting art and art education within the community. As a charter board member of the Works Progress Administration's Spokane Art Center, she was enthusiastic about the opportunities for artistic expansion offered by the Center including working alongside prominent artists from Chicago and New York. After the closure of Spokane Art Center in 1942, she taught classes at the YWCA and the Washington State College Extension Program. Jane Baldwin exhibited widely during the 1930s: the Art Institute of Chicago and the 27th Annual Artists Show at the Seattle Art Museum in 1941; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1942; the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1943; and the Library of Congress in 1945. Her works also appear in numerous publications. One of the earliest was "Who's Who in Northwest Art," edited by Marion Brymner Appleton and published in 1941. Two 1984 publications, "Great American Prints: 1900-1950," by June and Norman Kraeft, Dover Publications, Inc. and James Watrous, "A Century of American Printmaking," University of Wisconsin Press, re-introduced her work to art history students. Although Baldwin worked in watercolor, tempera, and gouache, she worked primarily with wood engravings and block prints. The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture owns sixty examples. Jane Baldwin was the daughter of Chap Dunning, a prolific collector and serious student of regional American Indian culture. In 1962, when Dunning donated her collection of 1,427 items to the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, it was considered the single best collection of regional American Indian cultural material owned by a museum. Sources: Manuscript collections, Joel E. Ferris Research Library and Archives, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture; Collection records, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane.