Exhibition: William Sanger – Downeast: Watercolors by William Sanger
May 13 – June 12, 2016.
Exhibition Opening Reception, Friday, May 13, 2016, 5-7 pm.
A selection of watercolors by New York artist, William Sanger (1873-1961), of the Maine coast. The watercolors are from the collection of the artist’s grandson, Alexander Sanger. A catalogue has been prepared for this exhibition by art historian, Alexandra C. Anderson.
by: Alexander Sanger
Reproductive freedom. What do these words mean? They mean having the children you want, when you want. They mean not becoming pregnant when you don’t want and not having children you don’t want. They mean sexual freedom; becoming and expressing who you are. Continue reading
My First Opera – in the Fall 2015 issue of Opera America
Link to my illustration in the Island Journal
http://www.islandjournal.com/article/view-of-the-world-from-north-haven/
An untitled painting by William Sanger.
THE SANGERS AS PAINTERS
Margaret Sanger and her family members are best known as birth-control pioneers. Yet three of them were also artists. Now their watercolors are on display at the Planned Parenthood of Northern New England’s gallery in Portland, Me.
Continue reading
As a part of First Friday Art Walk, May 1, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE) will sponsor The Sangers – Artists and Rebels, an exhibition of the paintings, drawings and photographs of two generations of the Sanger family, Margaret, William and Alexander. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, took up watercolors after moving to Tucson, Arizona in the late 1930’s painting mostly desert scenes (photo attached). By contrast, her husband, William Sanger, was a professional painter as well as architect, and began displaying his work in the 1910’s (photo of painting attached). A frequent visitor to Maine, many of his canvases are stormy, dramatic and visceral. Alexander Sanger took up drawing and watercolors after his retirement as President and CEO of PPNYC in 2000. He paints, like his grandfather, on the Maine coast and also in New York City.
Continue reading
On Friday May 1 the gallery at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England will be hosting “The Sangers: Artists and Rebels”, featuring the drawings, watercolors and photographs of yours truly, together with watercolors by my grandparents, Margaret and William Sanger. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the art of my family. This is also the 100th anniversary of my grandfather’s going to jail for birth control, preceding my grandmother’s first incarceration by a year.
The gallery is a 443 Congress Street, Portland, Maine and will be open 5-8pm.
by Alexander Sanger
One hundred years ago, a February day in 1913, two strangers, both fortyish, one in a formal black suit, wearing a black homburg, with carefully manicured nails, the other in a rumpled tweed suit, carrying in his oil-paint-stained hands a wide-brimmed brown fedora, stand alone in Gallery G of the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue (“The Armory Show”). Gallery G was the English, Irish and German room. A large painting, “The Garden of Love,” that has briefly brought the two men together, is by a Russian living in Munich, Vassily Kandinsky. It is mostly abstract, though some figures are vaguely discernible; it is the only abstract painting in the room — a colorful oil, with a blending of hues like a watercolor — vibrant and seething with energy. Gallery I, two galleries over, which contained, among other revolutionary abstract works, Duchamp’s “Nude Descending the Staircase,” was so crowded with gawkers that a visitor could barely see, much less absorb the revolutionary experience of the artworks. The two men had Gallery G and its one abstract painting, and ten realist ones, to themselves. The two men are my grandfathers. The better-dressed one, Edwin Campbell, a doctor turned businessman, lingers enthralled before the Kandinsky, while the other, William Sanger, an architect and sometime painter, though appreciative of Kandinsky’s painterly technique, moves on to the adjoining work, a non-abstract watercolor, “The Political Meeting,” by the Irish Jack Butler Yeats.
Continue reading
The theatrical Mister Roberts was a wartime naval officer who cared about the men on his ship more than he cared about his career. He also cared about getting into the thick of the fight. These two goals provided the dramatic conflict in the play written by Joshua Logan that premiered on Broadway in 1948. Robert’s captain was the one obstacle that stood in the way, since there was no way Roberts could get transferred to a destroyer without the captain’s signature on the transfer form. The captain wasn’t about to oblige because Roberts was a superb officer, and because of this the captain was willing to overlook Robert’s nasty habit of standing up for the interests of the crew and confronting the captain at every opportunity. The crew eventually held a contest to forge the captain’s signature, which got Roberts his transfer to a destroyer and which got him killed. The play enjoyed a limited revival this year in Washington at the Kennedy Center. I wonder if Judge Roberts went to see it? Continue reading
Alexander Sanger 