ENVISIONING NEW ENGLAND : Treasures from Community Art Museums
June 19 through September 26, 2004
Krieble Gallery
The Story of Our Museums
Envisioning New England: Treasures From Community Art Museums is the effort of fourteen mid-sized, community art museums, in five New England states. These museums (see list below) are members of the Consortium of New England Community Art Museums, a group founded in 1993 to broaden the impact of the individual organizations by sharing resources and inviting collaboration. Member institutions share the belief that the community museum plays a unique and valuable role in the cultural landscape of New England. They foster and promote the arts and humanities as a unifying force in a changing society by providing direct access to art and historical artifacts to people within the context of their own communities and beyond. Consortium museums collect, preserve, and exhibit objects, bring outstanding artists and scholars to their audiences, and facilitate the teaching of arts and humanities in local school systems.
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Arthur Diehl
Provincetown Harbor, c. 1920
Cape Museum of Fine Arts |
Harrison Brown
Barn Interior, c. 1885
Fruitlands Museums |
Lucy L'Engle
Truro in Winter, 1933
Provincetown Art Association and Museum |
Loans to the Envisioning New England exhibition represent only a few of the art treasures to be found in each museum’s collection. Their collections range from antiquities to contemporary works, and their programs appeal to the many interests and ages of diverse audiences. The museums offer visitors unique settings for the exploration and enjoyment of art. Each, in its own special way, celebrates the role of visual arts in the community.
The exhibition here at the Florence Griswold Museum is organized around the theme of the community museum. The works on loan from each museum are grouped together with a label describing the museum, the story of its founding, and its importance as an institution. Individual labels for paintings examine the works in light of recent scholarship on images of New England. The exhibition's presentation in Old Lyme is supported by a grant from Fleet Bank.
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Howard Gardiner Cushing
Portrait of Ethel Cushing,
c. 1904
Newport Art Museum and Art Association |
Childe Hassam
Isle of Shoals, Moonlight, 1890
Fitchburg Art Museum
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Edward Hopper
Blackhead, Monhegan, c. 1918
New Britain Museum of American Art |
New England as Artist Inspiration
Envisioning New England presents a snapshot rather than a definitive view of New England as depicted by American artists from 1850 to 1950. Since the colonial era New England has been home to scores of artists whose work responds to its landscape and people. The exhibition showcases paintings by such leading American artists as Fitz Hugh Lane, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, and Grandma Moses, as well as fine examples by lesser-known artists whose careers were important to their respective regions.
This special exhibition reveals how the artists of New England drew inspiration from the area’s diverse landscape, settled and unsettled. Several of the earliest works in the exhibition are panoramic views of a harmonious and prosperous countryside. Some painters turned to the region’s rural villages and its agricultural traditions, and others looked to the picturesque coastline. At the close of the nineteenth century, artists gathered in coastal art colonies from Old Lyme to Provincetown. There, painters discovered ready subjects, inexpensive lodgings, the camaraderie of other artists, and a respite from city life. A later generation of artists, informed by modernism, turned to industrial and urban subjects. All of these subjects, as well as many of the major trends in American art from 1850 to 1950, are represented in this selection of over 40 works that have never been shown together as a group.
All of these artists helped to create an enduring image of New England, which contributed greatly to how people viewed America. William Truettner, Senior Curator at Smithsonian's National Museum of America Art and author of an essay in the exhibition catalogue, explains that "for most of the years this exhibition covers, many of the attributes of New England culture were thought to be those of the nation."
A catalogue, published by the University Press of New England, is available in the Museum’s Shop.
Consortium members are:
The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury MA
The Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont
Cape Museum of Fine Arts, Dennis, MA
Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA
Farnsworth Museum and Library, Rockland, ME
Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT
Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, MA
Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton MA
Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, CT
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT
New Britain Museum of American Art,
New Britain, CT
Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
For further information about the Consortium and links to member museums go to www.communityartmuseums.org
See the exhibition next at:
Cape Museum of Fine Arts
November 13, 2004 - February 27, 2005
Farnsworth Art Museum
March 20 - June 19, 2005
Newport Art Museum
July 9 - October 2, 2005
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