Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey,
Oct. 13, 2018-Jan. 6, 2019
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
Feb. 2-May 5, 2019
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
May 25-Sept. 9, 2019
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Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
Feb. 2-May 5, 2019
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
May 25-Sept. 9, 2019
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Charles Willson Peale. The Artist in His Museum. 1822.Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection), 1878.1.2.
Significance: The story of our changing relationship with the natural world will be comprehensively told through this groundbreaking exhibition encompassing three centuries of American art. Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment presents more than 120 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, videos and works of decorative art, from the colonial period to the present, exploring for the first time how American artists of different traditions and backgrounds have both reflected and shaped environmental understanding while contributing to the development of a modern ecological consciousness. The result is a major reinterpretation of American art that examines both iconic masterpieces and rarely seen objects through a lens uniting art historical interpretation with environmental history, scientific analysis and the dynamic field of ecocriticism.
Content: This sweeping exhibition engages a wide range of genres and historical contexts – from colonial furniture to the art of Jeffersonian natural science, from Hudson River landscape painting to Native American basketry, from Dust Bowl regionalism to modernist abstraction and postwar environmental activism – highlighting the evolving ecological implications of subjects and contexts of creation as well as artistic materials and techniques.
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Albert Bierstadt, Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (left); Valerie Hegarty. Fallen Bierstadt. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Campari, USA © Valerie Hegarty (right)
The exhibition presents works by more than 100 artists, including John James Audubon, George Bellows, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Thomas Eakins, Theaster Gates, Winslow Homer, Louisa Keyser, Dorothea Lange, Ana Mendieta, Thomas Moran, Isamu Noguchi, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maya Lin, Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles Willson Peale, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Alexis Rockman, Robert Smithson, Carleton Watkins and Andrew Wyeth.
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John James Audubon, American, 1785–1851, "Carolina Parakeet," in The Birds of America, plate 26, 1827–38. [Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton
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John James Audubon, American, 1785–1851, "Carolina Parakeet," in The Birds of America, plate 26, 1827–38. [Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Salish-Kootenai, born 1940, Browning of America, 2000. Mixed media. Crocker Art Museum Purchase with contributions from Gail and John Enns and the George and Bea Gibson Fund 2007.23. © Jaune Quick-to-see-Smith.
Organizer: Princeton University Art Museum
Curators: Karl Kusserow, the John Wilmerding curator of American art at the Princeton University Art Museum; and Alan C. Braddock, the Ralph H. Wark associate professor of art history and American studies at the College of William and Mary
Publication:
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A major 448-page catalogue, published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition. In addition to essays by the curators, it features contributions by 13 distinguished scholars and artists in a variety of fields, including art historians Rachael DeLue and Robin Kelsey, artists Mark Dion and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and environmental theorists Timothy Morton and Rob Nixon.
A major 448-page catalogue, published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition. In addition to essays by the curators, it features contributions by 13 distinguished scholars and artists in a variety of fields, including art historians Rachael DeLue and Robin Kelsey, artists Mark Dion and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and environmental theorists Timothy Morton and Rob Nixon.