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Newsletter
- Fall 1998
Current
Exhibitions
On
the Nature of Landscape
8 September - 15 December 1998
In a tantalizingly varied selection of works from the museum's
holdings and from public and private collections focuses on the
tradition of landscape in Eastern and Western art. The exhibition
is premised on the assumption that landscape and nature are not
one and the same. Landscape takes its meaning from culture, which
has given various forms or categories to nature in order to shape
our sensations and perceptions, our experience of the real world.
Those categories might be described as moving from the most ordered-the
city-to the opposite-the untamed mountainscape, or the infinity
of outer space. The meaning of these categories changes over time.
For example, people recoiled from the unknown depths of the wilderness
during the Renaissance while in more modern times, from the Enlightenment
onward, the wilderness has taken on an ever increasing value under
the pressure of urbanization and population growth.
A variety of media is represented, from painting and photography
to ceramics and videosculpture. Featured artists include Berenice
Abbott, Albrecht Dürer, Max Ernst, Richard Estes, Helen Frankenthaler,
George Inness, Wang Hui, Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Nam June
Paik, and Yves Tanguy.
The exhibition is divided into sections that examine a variety
of themes: "The Urban Experience," "Views of the
Village," "Framing the Grove," "Civilization
and the Land," "Isolation and Inspiration," "Touring
and Exploring," and "Landscapes of the Mind." To
challenge the viewer's ideas about landscape, written responses
to individual works by art historians, anthropologists, artists,
and students will be included in the installation.
Roy R. Neuberger and
American Modernism at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
8 September - 15 December 1998
Collecting art has been
a lifelong passion for Roy Neuberger. He has acquired work not
only for his own enjoyment and edification but also to help American
artists and to educate the public. He has concentrated in particular
on the aesthetic instruction of the young by donating works to
college and university art museums, including the Mount Holyoke
College Art Museum.
An early sojourn in Paris to study painting convinced Mr. Neuberger
that his eye was better than his hand, and he abandoned his dream
of becoming an artist. It was also during that Parisian experience
that he learned Vincent van Gogh died a very poor man, having
never gained recognition for his talent. Mr. Neuberger, in his
early twenties, determined that he would find a way to encourage
and support struggling artists. He went to Wall Street in order
to make the money he would need to implement this plan. In a recent
autobiography, So Far, So Good -- The First 94 Years, he
discusses some of the reasons for his professional success. And
his success on Wall Street has, indeed, enabled him to support
artists. As he has explained, "I collect because I love works
of art and because, when I began, I believed that the contemporary
world should buy the work of contemporary artists. I still do.
When I started, I felt that in a small way I could render a service,
because I would be able to help artists who were young and struggling."
Over the years Mr. Neuberger has developed a very substantial
and significant collection of American modern art, which he has
also shared with several art museums through loans and donations.
The Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, State University
of New York at Purchase, is named in honor of his major gift of
artworks to that institution. He contributed 19 paintings to the
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum's collection between 1953 and
1963. These works form the nucleus of an exhibition that provides
an overview of advanced art in the United States during the first
half of this century. The exhibition, drawn entirely from the
museum's holdings, features the work of artists such as Robert
Henri, Milton Avery, John Marin, and Romare Bearden.
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