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April 7, 2016Western American Art Exhibition from Metropolitan Museum Opens at the New York State Museum April 9
The New York State Museum will open a western American art exhibition from The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 9, 2016. Imaging the American West: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be on exhibition in the State Museum’s West Gallery through July 17, 2016. From the earliest decades after its founding in 1870, The Met has collected works of art representing the American West. The exhibition features 48 paintings, works on paper, and sculptures from the permanent collections of three curatorial departments: The American Wing; Drawings and Prints; and Modern and Contemporary Art.
“We are pleased to once again bring an extraordinary collection from The Metropolitan Museum of Art to the State Museum,” said State Museum Director Mark Schaming. “The works on exhibition are remarkable visual metaphors of the American West created by renowned artists, including several who worked in New York State. The Board of Regents and the State Museum thank The Met for continuing to share works from its impressive collection with Museum visitors.”
“The Met is delighted to partner with the New York State Museum once again, and is proud to bring the exhibition Imaging the American West to the State capital,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Met. “For nearly two decades, we have presented exhibitions for our friends in government and the people of the Albany region. It is a wonderful way to share The Met’s remarkable collection—works of art that belong to everyone, locally, nationally and internationally.”
In the decades just before and after the turn of the 20th century, paintings and sculptures depicting majestic landscapes, Native Americans, cowboys and cavalry, and animals of the plains and the mountains served as visual metaphors for the Old West. Imaging the American West explores the aesthetic and cultural impulses behind the creation of artworks with American western themes so popular with audiences then and now.
The exhibition covers works dating from about 1850 to 1930 and centers on four specific themes: the land, Native Americans, wildlife, and cowboys. Artists represented in the exhibition include Albert Bierstadt, Paul Manship, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frederic Remington, and Charles M. Russell. The exhibition offers a fresh look at the multifaceted roles played by these artists in creating interpretations of western life and scenery, whether those interpretations are based on fact, fiction, or, most often, something in-between.
The film “The Making of a Bronze Statue: Alexander Phimister Proctor” will be screened within the exhibition. Produced by The Met in 1922, it examines the various steps in the creation of Proctor’s Theodore Roosevelt, an equestrian statue for Portland, Oregon, from modeling a small sketch in clay to casting the full-size bronze. Brief excerpts from other early films will also be shown.
Imaging the American West is the tenth exhibition drawn from The Met’s collection, a collaboration that began in the early 1990s to bring art from one of the world’s leading museums to the State Museum. The exhibition is organized by Thayer Tolles, Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at The Met.
