Now Showing at the Arkell

Please join us at the Museum for these current exhibitions.

Reflections on Water in American Painting – The Phelan Collection

Presented by Exhibits Development Group
June 19, 2010-October 3, 2010

Reflections on Water in American Painting is drawn from the collections of Arthur J. Phelan. The exhibition opens with the earliest form of American maritime painting – the grand academic-style portraits of graceful sailing ships – and includes waterscapes from the sea to the lakes and rivers of the American heartland, light-flooded impressionist visions of quaint New England seaside towns, and modernist renderings of industrial waterfronts and everyday life on the water. Highlights of the exhibition include James Bard’s meticulously drawn Hudson River steamboat, Frank Benson’s marshland with more than 30 rising ducks, William Trost Richards’ breaking waves, William Merritt Chase’s intense study of the Arno River, and Reginald Marsh’s cathedral-like rendering of a New Jersey railway bridge.

Anton Otto Fischer, Summer Seas, 1945, oil on canvas

Exhibition Contributing Sponsor: The Overbrook Managemnent Corporation

Arkell’s Inspiration:
The Marketing of Beech-Nut and Art for the People

Permanent Exhibition

Bartlett Arkell’s collection of late 19th and early 20th century American paintings and the use of his collection to market Beech-Nut products is the focus of this exhibition. The exhibition will be on display in Arkell’s original gallery and in new exhibition spaces. Arkell’s collection of works by Winslow Homer, American Impressionists, and members of The Eight will be reinstalled in the restored original gallery.

Bartlett Arkell, founder of the Canajoharie Library Art Gallery and the first President of Beech-Nut Packing Company, encouraged his marketing staff to use his collection in their print ads. The result of this borrowing of images from oil paintings created by artists such as Edward Gay and J.G. Brown, was a series of ad campaigns that brought “art to the masses” and linked the virtues found in the paintings with Beech-Nut gum and food products. Museum visitors will have an opportunity to use images from the collection to create their own Beech-Nut advertisement to take home or mail as a postcard.

Exhibition funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

 

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