Currency and postage artist Robert Dowd featured at John Wayne Airport

The following information was released by John Wayne Airport.

A collection of currency and postage paintings are on display at John Wayne Airport now through January 17, 2013. The collection is being exhibited in the Vi Smith Concourse Gallery of Terminal A across from Gates 2 through 5 and in Terminal C across from Gates 18 through 21 and is available for viewing by ticketed passengers.

The exhibition, titled ROBERT DOWD – American Artist, features 75 of Dowd’s paintings on loan to the Airport from a private collector in Los Angeles. The majority of the exhibit features paintings of currency and postage. Dowd’s work was exhibited in what is considered the first “Pop Art” exhibition in America which included art by Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud and Andy Warhol at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962.

More images can be seen on the airport’s website.

“The Airport is pleased to feature this collection in our Vi Smith Concourse Gallery,” said Airport Director Alan Murphy. “We hope unique exhibits like Dowd’s will enhance the travel experience of John Wayne Airport passengers.”

Dowd (1936 – 1995) is best known for his controversial currency paintings where he explored and questioned the nature of money as a tool and a means to affect change. He has been quoted saying, “Money is a powerful blend of American literature, document and symbol. Forget that it illustrates a complete monetary system of unimaginable proportions or that it represents destinies of nations and men. What we are dealing with here is a marvelous form of American literature of epic proportions…”