Archive of Past Exhibitions at the Arkell Museum
Drawn to the Same Place: The Drawings of Rufus Grider and Fritz Vogt 1885 - 1900
April 1, 2011-August 14, 2011
Fritz Vogt, Residence of Mr. and Mrs. F. Snell, Minden, N.Y., July 31, 1895. Collection of Frank Tosto.
Rufus Grider (1817-1900) and Fritz Vogt (1842-1900) sketched the farms, homes, stores and churches found in the Mohawk Valley. These two remarkable vernacular artists, whose personal stories and motivations could not have been more different, documented buildings and landscapes in the same rural New York region during 1890-1900. They were both German-speakers who came to the Mohawk Valley as adults. Grider, a Canajoharie schoolteacher, studied early accounts of the Mohawk Valley in an effort to reconstruct the past and document his interest in the fast-changing landscape. Vogt was an itinerant handyman and artist who produced his portraits of farms and homes as a way to earn a living. While they created their sketches for different reasons, their works viewed together provide us with a clear picture of of the past.
Exhibition funded, in part, by the New York Council for the Humanities, and by the Iroquois Gas Transmission System.
Look With Your Own Eyes: Landscapes, Portraits and Pastimes in American Paintings
October 2010-March 22, 2011
Albert Bierstadt, El Capitan, c.1872.
Many of the stars of the Arkell Museum’s remarkable collection of American paintings are featured in this exhibition. The exhibition showcases the rich variety of America’s landscape from a western landscape of El Capitan by Albert Bierstadt, to Winslow Homer’s dramatic crashing waves on the coast of Maine. Portraits in the exhibition include George Washington by Gilbert Stuart and everyday folk by Thomas Hart Benton. A glimpse at how American’s spent their leisure time in the mid twentieth century can be seen be seen in The Sand Lot Ball Game by Paul Sample, and in circus scenes by Jon Corbino and Ogden Pleisner. The title of the exhibition comes from Gilbert Stuart who stated: “Paint what you see and look with your own eyes.” Visitors will discover how realist artists’ interpretation of “paint what you see” changed through the decades.
Paul Sample, Sandlot Ball Game, 1938.
Exhibition Contributing Sponsors: Sano-Rubin Construction Services; The Overbrook Managemnent Corporation
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
American Tonalism: Paintings of Poetry and Soul
On DisplayFebruary 27, 2010– June 6, 2010
George Inness In the Pasture, c. 1876-78, oil on canvas, The Arkell Hall Foundation
The Tonalist style of painting was embraced by many American artists from the 1880s through the early 20th century. The two European styles that influenced the development of American Tonalism were Aestheticism as it was practiced by the American expatriot James Abbot McNeill Whistler; and the French Barbizon style as it was spiritually interpreted by George Inness. A limited, muted palette and a misty poetic interpretation of landscape characterize tonalist works.
Picturing Women:
American Artists’ Images of Women 1780s-1940
March 4, 2010-June 8, 2010
Reginald March Windy Day, c. 1940, watercolor on paper
The Arkell Museum owns remarkable portraits of women painted by notable American artists such as Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Eakins and Mary Cassatt. This exhibition includes these portraits along with other painted views of women at leisure and perusing everyday activities. The representations of women in this exhibition range from young to old, and from entirely decorative to thoroughly personal. Some are formally posed portraits while others, such as Reginald Marsh’s watercolor A Windy Day, capture a specific snap-shot moment in time.
Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic
On DisplayNovember 15, 2009 – February 15, 2010
O Frabjous Mirrors! © Walter Wick 1984, from Games Magazine
Walter Wick’s photographs and models escape the book to assume a larger than life presence that magically draws both children and adults into a world of make believe. The exhibition, organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art, includes enlarged photographs and models used for Walter Wick’s popular I Spy and Can You See What I See? children’s books.
Moving Frontiers: Early Transportation in the Mohawk Valley
On Display
August 20, 2009 – November 4, 2009
Maitland Armstrong (1836 - 1918)Grocery Store on the Erie Canal, 1881, Arkell Museum Collection
This exhibition of images, objects and revealing quotes provides a glimpse back to a time when people and supplies traveled only by river, road, canal and train. Photographs, paintings, trade signs, a boat model and a sleigh manufactured in the 19th century will be on display next to the words of European visitors who traveled through the Mohawk Valley in the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibition was developed in conjunction with the symposium Moving Frontiers: Early Transportation in the Mohawk Valley (October 17-18, 2009).
Exhibition funded, in part, by the New York Council for the Humanities.
Then & Now: Contemporary Artists Revisit the Past
On Display
May 15, 2009 – August 5, 2009
The Oxbow, After Church, After Cole, Flooded, 1979-1994, final study (Flooded River for the Matriarchs E. and A. Mongan) Stephen Hannock
The exhibition juxtaposes the work of contemporary artists with 19th and early 20th century painters that may have influenced, inspired or led them in an opposite direction. Contemporary artists in this exhibition include April Gornik, Stephen Hannock, Stanley Lewis, Jane Lund, Dennis Pinette and Devorah Sperber. The 19th century paintings in Then & Now were created by notable artists such as George Inness, Ralph Blakelock and Thomas Eakins. Museum visitors will have the unique opportunity to compare the subjects, themes, materials, and painting techniques found in works by American artists of today to earlier masters of landscape and portrait painting.
Exhibition funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
Love Story
Romance Illustrations from the New Britain Museum of American Art’s Sanford B.D. Low Memorial Illustration CollectionOn Display:
February 1, 2009-May 3, 2009
Carter, Love Scene
The exhibition includes 60 original works that were used to illustrate romantic fiction from the 1890s through the mid twentieth century. The drawings, watercolors and oil paintings were created by well-known artists as James Montgomery Flagg, Dean Cornwell, Henry Raleigh, Coby Whitmore, Alex Ross, F.R. Gruger and Alice Barber Stephens. Many works accompanied love stories in early issues of magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, McCall’s, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Monthly, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Home Companion and Ladies Home Journal, which published original fiction in each issue.
Sleigh Bells, Green Fields and Falling Leaves:
Four seasons of American Landscape Painting
On Display
November 1, 2008 to May 3, 2009
George Inness (1825-1894) The Rainbow, c. 1878 Oil on canvas, Arkell Museum collection
Experience America’s four seasons of snow, fall colors and green fields depicted in paintings from the Arkell Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition includes autumn paintings by Willard Metcalf and Alexander Wyant, winter scenes painted by E. W. Redfield, Walter Launt Palmer and Grandma Moses, and summer and spring landscapes by George Inness and William Glackens.
American Ruins
On Display
October 4, 2008 to January 21, 2009
Arthur Drooker has photographed historic sites throughout the United States. American Ruins features fifty sepia-toned infrared photographs of more than 25 historical sites. Drooker captures these ruins and preserves them for a moment in time. His subjects include adobe missions and the remains of elegant mansions. To be included in Drooker's project, the ruins had to meet certain criteria: they had to be part of a preservation program, they had to have historical value and they had to represent the geographic and architectural diversity of America.
Arthur Drooker, Bannerman Castle, Pollepel Island, New York, 1901
Winslow Homer Watercolors
On Display
July 26, 2008 to October 19, 2008
NBT Gallery
The Arkell Museum’s collection of Winslow Homer watercolors will be brought out of storage for this remarkable exhibition.
Winslow Homer, On the Cliff, 1881
Wyeth Family Paintings from the Farnsworth Art Museum
On Display
June 27, 2008 to September 21, 2008
N.C. Wyeth, Portrait of a Young Artist,
c. 1930, Farnsworth Art Museum Collection
Watercolors and oil paintings by three generations of America’s most famous family of artists — Jamie, Andrew, and N.C. Wyeth — will be on display through the summer. This collection of paintings comes from the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine.
Exhibition sponsored by NBT Bank.
Famous and Fabulous Portraits
from George Washington to the Golden Girl
On Display
January 20, 2008 to July 20, 2008
George de Forest Brush, Golden Girl, 1925
This fascinating exhibition of portraits by some of America’s best known artists from the 18th through the early 20th century is selected from the Arkell Museum’s permanent collection. The subject of these paintings range from America’s first president painted by Gilbert Stuart to an introspective portrait by Thomas Eakins and a beautiful woman painted by John Singer Sargent.
Gilbert Stuart,
Portrait of George Washington, c. 1820
Immigration, Politics and Caricature:
Ethnic and Political Images from the Appel, Arkell and
Zim House Collections
On Display
March 9, 2008 to June 15, 2008
Judge Magazine Cover,
Michigan State University Appel Collection
The Appel Collection of immigrant and ethnic caricatures from Judge and Puck magazines date from the late 19th century to World War I, a period of massive migration to the United States. The images, sometimes humorous, sometimes very disturbing, depict American values and attitudes of the period. Original art by the cartoonists Gilliam and Zim will be shown alongside the magazine illustrations.
Click to view MSU online exhibition
Exhibition funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
Mohawk Valley Views
On Display
September 23, 2007 to February 20, 2008
William Wall,
New York and the Erie Canal, 1862
Edward Gay,Mother Earth, 1892
The Mohawk Valley’s River, the Erie Canal, and the picturesque villages and farmland have all been sources of inspiration for artists from the early 1800s up to the present.
The landscape here today is a reflection of the work of German settlers who cleared the land and planted wheat in the 18th century. Nineteenth-century travel books featured images of the new canal and railroad that ran along river. Painters were also drawn to these images and tended to show the changing modes of transportation in harmony with nature.
William Wall’s painting New York and the Erie Canal is believed by many to be the quintessential image of the Mohawk Valley, capturing all the elements people associate with this region.
Edward Gay, another 19th century artist featured in this exhibition, was a well-known Albany and New York City artist who frequently returned to the Mohawk Valley for inspiration. His large oil painting, Mother Earth, measuring over eight feet in length, places the viewer in the middle of a large hayfield with the farmer in the distance and majestic sky overhead.
The rural views captured by artists in past centuries can still be found today. Contemporary artists depict these views but some artists such as Walter Hatke show us the beauty and hint at what might be hiding under our broad skies.
Fragile Masterpieces:
Pastels and Watercolors from the Permanent Collection
On Display
September 23, 2007 to January 10, 2008
Maurice Prendergast, Revere Beach, c. 1902
The Arkell Museum has a remarkable collection of American watercolors and pastels, but due to the fragile nature of these works, they can only be displayed occasionally for short periods of time. This opening exhibition will bring out of safe storage the museum’s finest watercolors by Maurice Prendergast, Edward Hopper, and Reginald Marsh. Pastel landscapes, still-lifes, and portraits by artists such as Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O’Keeffe will also be on display to show how many notable American artists were masters of both pastels and watercolors.
• • • • •
On the Road
Below are some notable past exhibitions at other museums where works on loan from the Arkell were featured.
From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland
May 7 - August 7, 2011
The Mint Museum
Charlotte. NC
Robert Henri's Moira , one of the first paintings Bartlett Arkell purchased for the Canajoharie Library, is on loan to this exhibition, the first to examine Henri's work focused on Irish landscapes and people, particularly children. These works were created between the time of Henri's trips to Ireland in 1913 and 1928.
John LaFarge's Second Paradise: Voyages in the South Seas, 1890 - 1891
October 19, 2010 - January 2, 2011
Yale University Art Gallery
New Haven, CT
January 22 - March 27, 2011
Addison Gallery of American Art
Andover, MA
La Farge's watercolor from the Arkell Museum collection was included in this exhibition that showcased the most important La Farge oils, watercolors and sketches from his journey to the islands of the South Pacific.
John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women
May 29 - December 31, 2010
The Fenimore Art Museum
Cooperstown, NY
The Arkell Museum's Sargent portrait Head of an Italian Woman was featured in this award winning exhibition devoted exclusively to portraits of women by American artist John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925).
Art in America: Three Hundred Years of Innovation
February 10 - April 5, 2007
National Art Museum of China
Beijing
At this historic first survey exhibition of American art ever presented in the People’s Republic of China, a highlight was one of our own prized Winslow Homer paintings, Watching the Breakers: A High Sea.
