Member Reception with Ernest Cox

Please join us for Member Reception: Friday, Mar 27, 2026; 4– 6 PM
“I consider most of my sculpture a fragile symbiosis. I want it to achieve a visual sensuality which is at once part of, and independent of, “other” content. That pure visual quality is perhaps less at the heart of my work now than at the beginning, but for me it still provides a critical transformation.”—Ernest Cox, 2017
A Fragile Symbiosis: The Sculpture of Ernest Cox celebrates the distinguished career of longtime Easton resident and sculptor, Ernest Cox (1937-2024), who taught for more than thirty years in the art department at the University of South Florida in Tampa. There, he worked alongside fellow artists Dr. Donald Saff, George Holzer, and Kenneth Elliott, all of whom would later join Cox in the Easton area. Organized by the Academy Art Museum, A Fragile Symbiosis complements the exhibition Rauschenberg 100: New Connections and illustrates the deep and abiding relationships established by artists on the Eastern Shore.
The most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work in nearly 30 years, A Fragile Symbiosis contains more than 20 sculptures and illustrates the arc of Cox’s artistic career, beginning with his early “Slab Series”—singular, wall-mounted sculptures made from fabricated and salvaged metal—to his later multi-part assemblages.