The New Jersey State Museum opened a new exhibition in October 19. 2024 featuring the work of Robert Duran, an artist who spent the latter part of his life working in New Jersey. “Robert Duran,” opened in October 19, 2024, offered visitors the opportunity to trace the arc of Duran’s evolutions and experiments in painting, drawing, and watercolor from roughly 1967 to the late 1990s.

Major support for this exhibition and the accompanying publication has been generously provided by Karma Gallery. Additional support has been provided by the New Jersey State Museum Foundation through the Lucille M. Paris Fund and the Martha Vaughn Fund. The exhibition was on view through March 16, 2025.

Born in Salinas, California, to a Filipino father and Shawnee mother, Robert Duran (1938–2005) arrived in New York in the early 1960s via San Francisco, where he soon became part of the artistic milieu associated with Bykert Gallery.

Despite a critically successful career in the New York art world, around 1980 Duran moved with his family to Hillsdale, New Jersey, where he privately continued to develop his painting style. Much of what we know about Duran is limited to exhibition history and anecdotes from friends, family, and acquaintances who can only begin to flesh out certain contours of the artist’s life, often leaving more questions than answers.