The Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, Oregon, has opened 'C.S. Price: A Portrait,' a retrospective exhibition of more than 40 works by Clayton Sumner Price, a Modernist painter who helped shape America’s view of the West. The show was organized by Roger Saydack, a retired attorney and self-taught scholar who first encountered Price’s painting 'The Fisherman' as a boy at the Detroit Institute of Arts and spent decades researching the artist. It runs through August 30 and is the first solo exhibition of Price’s work in over 25 years, accompanied by a 312-page catalog.
This exhibition matters because it rescues from obscurity an artist who, despite his low profile and small surviving oeuvre, is recognized as Oregon’s foremost Modernist painter and a significant figure in Western American art. Saydack’s personal journey from a childhood encounter to becoming the world’s leading authority on Price underscores the lasting impact a single artwork can have, while the show itself fills a critical gap in regional art history and public access to Price’s legacy.