Recent Acquisitions
 | | Shane McCallister, Charlie Putting on a Jacket, 2009, printed 2011, color photograph, 16 x 20 inches, Museum purchase, Bertha Cowles Quarton Fund, 2011.040-.043. |
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Shane McCallister was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and grew up in Marion, Iowa. In 2005, McCallister moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. While working towards a bachelor of fine arts degree he studied printmaking, design, film, and photography. In 2010 McCallister moved back to Iowa to be closer to his family. He started his own photography business, McCallister Photos, in Cedar Rapids.
During his time at MCAD, McCallister began a series of photographs featuring the ventriloquist dummy, Charlie McCarthy. Made famous by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy has been around since the 1930s. In McCallister’s hands, however, he takes on a new life. Working with only a single puppet, McCallister created a series of situations for McCarthy, using Photoshop as his tool. In this image, McCarthy has just come from his closet where he went to choose a jacket to wear. The funny part is that McCarthy only has one outfit—a black tuxedo.
McCallister’s photograph is one of four that the Museum purchased to add to its small but growing photography collection. All four will be featured in an upcoming exhibition entitled
Lure of the Local: Collecting the Corridor, 2006-2011, which opens February 4, 2012.
If you are interested in donating a work of art to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, please get in touch with Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Sean Ulmer at 319.366.7503 ext. 202 or via email at
sulmer@crma.org.
Interested in starting or expanding an art collection of your own? Consider joining the
CRMA's Collectors' Circle.