Rita Blitt will be the featured artist at the Margaret Harwell Art Museum in May.
“She was famous for some of her artwork, and she was very well known in the New York City dance scene,” said museum director Steve Whitworth.
Blitt, who has a studio in Kansas City and lives in California, is winding down her career and offered some of her artwork to the Margaret Harwell Art Museum.
“She’s a real neat lady. We’ve had quite a few communications with each other,” Whitworth said. “She’s giving away her legacy and wanted to share her love of art and dance with the world and keep it going.”
Blitt previously has completed “big industrial sculptures, and she’s famous for being on one side of a glass panel while she paints on it as dancers are on the other side, so she can copy their natural motion and movement,” Whitworth said.
Blitt also is famous for her words, “Kindness is contagious. Catch it,” and her works have been featured in more than 70 solo exhibitions.
An opening reception will be held from 6-8 p.m. May 1, Whitworth noted, though because of health reasons, the artist will not be in attendance.
The artwork will be on display throughout the month of May, Whitworth said, and includes “a lot of smaller pieces.”
Whitworth described the works as a “combination of performing arts and visual arts. This is different. We haven’t had anything like this.”
Blitt “puts performing arts into two-dimensional compositions,” he said.
The show will include “drawings and pastels and colorful things that show movement and form and energy,” Whitworth said.
“I’m very excited,” Whitworth said. “This will be the art of human motion put into art.”
With Blitt’s donation, the artwork, Whitworth said, will become a permanent part of the museum’s collection.