Monday, July 14, 2025

'Renoir and Love

Musée d’Orsay, Paris 

17 March – 19 July 2026

 the National Gallery, London 

3 October 2026 – 31 January 2027

 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

20 February – 13 June 2027


With over 50 works 'Renoir and Love'  will be the most significant exhibition of the French impressionist’s work in the UK for 20 years.

The first exhibition devoted to the artist at the National Gallery since 2007 'Renoir and Love' will include his most experimental, ambitious and admired canvases including the iconic 'Bal au Moulin de la Galette' (1876, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which will be exhibited in the UK for the first time.

Organised in partnership with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 'Renoir and Love' will focus on the crucial years of the artist’s career, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. 

The exhibition traces the evolution of the imagery of affection, seduction, conversation, male camaraderie and the sociability of the café and theatre, as well as merry-making, flirtation, courtship and child-rearing in Renoir’s art. 

Loans from private collections and museums worldwide include pictures from Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen; the Städel Museum, Frankfurt; the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena, California; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Exhibition co-curator Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, says: 'More than any of his contemporaries, Renoir was committed to chronicling love and friendship and their informal manifestations as keys to modern life. Whether on Parisian streetcorners or in sun-dappled woodlands, he understood that emotion could be as fleeting, as evanescent, as blinding, as his other great and transitory subject, sunlight itself.’

Such themes are explored in tender and personal works to beguiling multi-figure compositions of urban and suburban sociability. Several full-length figure compositions, such as 'The Umbrellas' (1881, reworked 1885, National Gallery), show how Renoir develops the theme into paintings 'worthy of the museum.' His Dance compositions remain universally loved symbols of the French fin-de-siècle. In the early 1880s Renoir moved away from Impressionist style with its fascination with the play of light to more solid, sculptural compositions, but the theme of friendship and joy in nature remains.

The exhibition was initiated by the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and is organised by the Musée d’Orsay, the National Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, BostonThe curators are:

Paris

Paul Perrin, Chief Curator and Director of Conservation and Collections at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; with the participation of Lucie Lachenal-Tabellet, Archival Research Assistant at the Musée d’Orsay

London

Christopher Riopelle, Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings, National Gallery, London, and Chiara Di Stefano, Associate Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, London

Boston

Katie Hanson, William and Ann Elfers Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; with the participation of Julia Welch, Arthur K. Solomon Assistant Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


IMAGES


 Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, 1876

Oil on canvas, 131.5 cm x 176.5 cm.

Gustave Caillebotte Bequest, 1896

© Musée d'Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt



Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The Promenade, 1870

J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles)

Oil on canvas

81.3 × 64.8 cm

© J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles)



Pierre-Auguste Renoir

La Conversation, 1878

oil on canvas

45 × 38 cm

Nationalmuseum (Stockholm)

© Nationalmuseum (Stockholm)




Saturday, July 12, 2025

“Untitled” (America)

The Whitney Museum of American Art 

Beginning July 5, 2025

The Whitney Museum of American Art presents a refreshed look at the Museum’s collection in the exhibition “Untitled” (America). Coinciding with the Whitney’s ten-year anniversary in its current building downtown, this reinstallation celebrates highlights of the collection alongside new acquisitions in an open, dynamic exhibition design that forges connections across subjects and decades. 

Reflecting on the vision of its founder, sculptor, and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the presentation underscores the Museum’s longtime commitment to supporting contemporary American art, even as the notion of “America” has and continues to evolve. Today, the Whitney’s collection is a testament to the ambitious and experimental practices of artists in the United States, offering diverse stories of American life through formal, social, and political lenses. “Untitled” (America) features recognizable favorites by renowned American artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Archibald John Motley Jr., Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, Alma Thomas, Kay WalkingStick, and Andy Warhol, alongside more recent acquisitions from the Museum’s collection. It highlights key ideas and artistic approaches in American art from 1900 through the early 1980s, at times cutting across chronological boundaries. 

Beginning with the Whitney’s robust holdings in figurative and realist traditions, the presentation considers how artists have responded to place and memory in the American landscape, popular culture and the rise of consumerism, the seductions and illusions of mass media, and the spatial and cultural dynamics of abstraction. “

We’re thrilled to welcome visitors back to our collection galleries,” said Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum. “The newly configured spaces offer something for everyone, with favorite works in new conversations, and recent additions to the collection making stunning debuts. Special installations, like a daylit sculpture gallery dedicated to the work of Isamu Noguchi, celebrate the great strengths of the collection set within the unique architecture of the Whitney’s downtown building.” 

“Untitled” (America) will be on view at the Whitney Museum beginning July 5, 2025. The exhibition is curated by Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney, with Antonia Pocock, Curatorial Assistant. This presentation of the Whitney’s collection is dedicated to the memory of Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman Emeritus, who recently passed away, in honor of his extensive contributions to the Museum.

Exhibition Overview

“Untitled” (America) On the occasion of the Whitney’s tenth anniversary downtown, “Untitled” (America) celebrates the past, present, and future of the Museum’s collection. This presentation, which features works from 1900 through 1980, highlights beloved icons from the Whitney’s collection, including recent acquisitions that expand existing narratives and surface new ones. Organized thematically, the exhibition foregrounds key ideas and approaches in twentieth-century artmaking in the United States, and the open exhibition design allows for meaningful connections to be made across subjects and time periods. The exhibition title draws inspiration from Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose 1994 work of the same name will be installed in the west window, just off the entrance to the exhibition. This work, consisting of twelve strands of light bulbs, one of which will be installed here, offers a participatory meditation on the concept of “America.” 

As Gonzalez-Torres reflected, “The America that I now know is still a place of light, a place of opportunities, of risks, of justice, of racism, of injustice, of hunger and excess, of pleasure and growth. Democracy is a constant job, a collective dedication. My sculpture “Untitled” (America) comes with no instructions. It can be installed any way someone might want.” 

In that spirit, this exhibition embraces the complexity and contradictions of “American” art, leaving its definition open to question and collaboration from visitors. “Untitled” (America) opens with five iconic works from the collection: Jasper Johns, Three Flags (1958), Georgia O'Keeffe, Summer Days (1936), Barkley L. Hendricks, Steve (1976), Alma Thomas, Mars Dust (1972), and Kay WalkingStick, April Contemplating May (1972). 

The first gallery is dedicated to the Whitney’s rich history of collecting works by artists working in figural and realist traditions. It highlights several works from the Museum’s founding collection, including Robert Henri, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1916), George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo (1924), and Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning (1930). Reflecting on the Museum’s continued commitment to realism and portraiture, Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother (1936) will be paired with Alice Neel’s Andy Warhol (1970), both on view at the Museum for the first time in several years.

The American landscape will be examined through conceptions of place, memory, and war, with a selection of works from Jacob Lawrence’s War Series (1946-47), paired with a new acquisition by Fritz Scholder, Massacre at Wounded Knee II (1970). Works by Elsie Driggs, Eldzier Cortor, Joseph Stella, and a new acquisition by Aaron Douglas will examine the built landscape across different moments in US history. Subsequent galleries in the exhibition explore how artists have engaged with objects from everyday life, both as materials and sources of inspiration. 

Works like Yayoi Kusama’s Air Mail Stickers (1969) explore an artist’s transformation of the mundane to the extraordinary, and Marisol’s print Diptych (1971) introduces an irreverent take on self-portraiture through the use of her own body as a matrix. Works by Gerald Murphy and Man Ray offer earlier examples of artists questioning consumerism and bringing popular culture into their work. 

The seductions and illusions of mass media are explored in works like Nam June Paik’s Magnet TV (1965), which undermines the power of broadcast and mass media by distorting and manipulating the content being served to the viewers. Ed Ruscha’s Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962), Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Hollywood Africans (1983), Andy Warhol’s Ethel Scull 36 Times (1963), and Rosalyn Drexler’s Marilyn Pursued by Death (1963) point to the artifice of Hollywood and celebrity culture while engaging in the visual languages of commercial culture. The final gallery of the exhibition explores abstraction through key Abstract Expressionist works, including Clyfford Still’s Untitled (1956), Norman Lewis' American Totem (1960), and Mark Rothko’s Four Darks in Red (1958). Alongside these paintings, Jay DeFeo’s The Rose (1958-66), Lee Bontecou’s Untitled (1963), and a recent acquisition, Zilia Sánchez’s Eros (1976/1998), push further at the spatial and material dynamics of abstraction.

Aaron Douglas, Mural Study for Cravath Hall, Fisk University, 1929. Gouache on board, 17 1/2 × 35 3/8 in. (44.5 × 89.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the DeMartini Family Endowment, the Ganzi Family Endowment, the Meg and Bennett Goodman Family Foundation, and the Poses Family Endowment 2023.17. © 2025 Estate of Aaron Douglas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

IMAGES



 Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930. Oil on canvas, 35 3/16 × 60 1/4 in. (89.4 × 153 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.426. © 2025 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 



George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo, 1924. Oil on canvas, 51 1/8 × 63 1/4 in. (129.9 × 160.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.95; 



Archibald John Motley, Jr., Gettin' Religion, 1948. Oil on linen, 32 × 39 7/16 in. (81.3 × 100.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase Josephine N. Hopper Bequest, by exchange 2016.15. © Valerie Gerrard Browne 



Robert Henri, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916. Oil on canvas, 49 15/16 × 72in. (126.8 × 182.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Flora Whitney Miller 86.70.3



Joseph Stella, The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939. Oil on canvas, 70 1/4 × 42 3/16 in. (178.4 × 107.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase 42.15; 



Norman Lewis, American Totem, 1960. Oil on canvas, 73 11/16 × 43 1/8 in. (187.2 × 109.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund in memory of Preston Robert and Joan Tisch, the Painting and Sculpture Committee, Director’s Discretionary Fund, Adolph Gottlieb, by exchange, and Sami and Hala Mnaymneh 2018.141. © Norman Lewis, courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC

Gerald Murphy, Cocktail, 1927. Oil and pencil on linen, 29 1/16 × 29 15/16 in. (73.8 × 76 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Evelyn and Leonard A. Lauder, Thomas H. Lee and the Modern Painting and Sculpture Committee 95.188. © 2025 Estate of Honoria Murphy Donnelly / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Aaron Douglas, Mural Study for Cravath Hall, Fisk University, 1929. Gouache on board, 17 1/2 × 35 3/8 in. (44.5 × 89.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the DeMartini Family Endowment, the Ganzi Family Endowment, the Meg and Bennett Goodman Family Foundation, and the Poses Family Endowment 2023.17. © 2025 Estate of Aaron Douglas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Several soldiers in brown uniforms charge forward with rifles and bayonets; one soldier holds a grenade in the air.

Jacob Lawrence, War Series: Beachhead, 1947. Tempera on composition board, 15 7/8 × 20 1/16 in. (40.3 × 51 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.13. © 2025 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Several people in brown and blue clothing stand together, some raising their arms, with bottles lined up on shelves above.

Jacob Lawrence, War Series: On Leave, 1947. Tempera on composition board, 16 3/16 × 20 1/4 in. (41.1 × 51.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.12a-b. © 2025 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Three abstract human figures with brown and black bodies and pink hands appear to be falling or moving quickly.
Jacob Lawrence, War Series: Purple Hearts, 1947—Press Assets
A white-framed box contains many clear glass bubbles over a background of black and white abstract patterns and text.
Mary Bauermeister, Homage to Marbert Du Breer, 1964—Press Assets
A group of people with raised arms reach toward a long rope hanging from above, set against a blue background.
Jacob Lawrence, War Series: Docking - Cigarette, Joe?, 1947—Press Assets
Tall, abstract bronze sculpture with three stacked, rounded forms, each featuring curved shapes and smooth surfaces.
Isamu Noguchi, Endless Coupling, 1957—Press Assets
Tall abstract metal sculpture with three vertical, elongated shapes joined together, standing on a gray floor.
Isamu Noguchi, The Gunas, 1946—Press Assets
A glass with an olive, cigars in a box, a lemon slice, a corkscrew, and a shaker.
Gerald Murphy, Cocktail, 1927—Press Assets
Five shiny electric irons are lined up in a row, with their cords twisted behind them.
Margaret Bourke-White, Edison Electric, 1930—Press Assets
Two people wearing sunglasses, one man and one woman, appear to be running together against a plain black background.
Rosalyn Drexler, Marilyn Pursued by Death, 1963—Press Assets
Two people with serious expressions, one standing and holding a flower, the other sitting and wearing a headscarf.

Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, 1926-c. 1936. Oil on canvas, 60 × 50 1/4 in. (152.4 × 127.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Julien Levy for Maro and Natasha Gorky in memory of their father 50.17. © 2025 The Arshile Gorky Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


A person in a red coat and green hat sits holding a rifle, surrounded by dark, leaf-like shapes.
Jacob Lawrence, War Series: Victory, 1947—Press Assets

Thursday, July 10, 2025

TEAMWORK in Antwerp! Pieter Bruegel, Hendrick van Balen and the others

 From 14 June to 5 October 2025, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD, Dresden State Art Collections) is showing "TEAMWORK in Antwerp! Pieter Bruegel, Hendrick van Balen and the others", an exhibition on the structure and work of important studios in 17th-century Antwerp. 

The exhibition is based on a comprehensive research project on the Flemish painting collections in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister that began in 2012. The latest, previously unpublished results of this research show how artists from different painting workshops joined forces and produced paintings together in efficiently organised work processes. The exhibition illustrates how this collaboration functioned on many different levels.

Almost all of the 53 paintings and 28 drawings and prints come from the SKD's holdings - plus six selected loans from Leipzig, Antwerp and private collections. More than half of the paintings have not been exhibited in Dresden since the Second World War, and some from the Brueghel and Francken family workshops have never been shown before.

After the storms of the Counter-Reformation under Spanish-Habsburg leadership, Antwerp experienced a new economic boom at the beginning of the 17th century, which brought a certain prosperity to an increasingly broad class of citizens. Cabinet paintings, i.e. small-format pictures with religious or mythological themes, landscape paintings and still lifes, were in great demand. So much in demand that artists, especially celebrated artists such as Jan Bruegel the Elder, Hendrik van Balen and Frans Francken the Younger, could barely keep up with production. As a result, workshop practice focussed on efficiency became increasingly important: Painters and their studios formed networks and co-operated in the production of paintings with an intensity and professionalism that had not previously been observed in Netherlandish painting.

The exhibition shows how this collaboration was organised, who was involved and how the paintings were produced. Artists such as Jan Brueghel the Elder and Frans Francken the Younger gave their names to the works. When paintings were painted in large numbers and of poorer quality in their workshops by assistants, pupils or itinerant labourers, care was taken to paint them at least ‘in the manner of’ Brueghel I or Balen’. The copies were sometimes so good that it was difficult to distinguish them from the original. The research project was able to shed light on this: 45 works were intensively analysed both technically (usually using radiation diagnostic methods, dendrochronology and microscopy) and in terms of art history. It was discovered that the big names sometimes concealed different artists.

The exhibition presents all the protagonists and the characteristics of their paintings: Jan Brueghel the Elder, for example, was famous for his landscape paintings and floral still lifes, while Hendrick van Balen loved to paint mythological figure scenes and Frans Francken specialised in small-figure biblical scenes.

They combined their talents for the efficient production of cabinet paintings. The division of labour took place not only within a studio, but also between the individual houses.

Works on paper form a separate focus in the exhibition. Drawn studies were created for popular motifs from everyday life, special natural scenes and fictional subjects, which were often widely received artistically. Drawings also served as sketches of ideas to clarify the overall composition and helped the artists to discuss individual motifs. TEAMWORK shows a total of 28 drawings and prints from the collection of the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden. Among others, the very rare and therefore rarely exhibited pen and ink drawing ‘The Gooseherd’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder will be on display. Works of art such as this sheet provide an intimate insight into the process of creating the paintings and into artistic workshop practice.

Individual motifs are used to illustrate how they can be found in the various paintings and in different qualities. The visitors are encouraged to look closely and recognise painting styles and handwriting. The exhibition thus becomes a ‘school of seeing’.

IMAGES



Jan Brueghel d.Ä., Landschaft mit dem Rohrdommeljäger, 1605
© Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Foto: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut


Hendrik van Balen, Das Hochzeitsfest des Bacchus und der Ariadne, um 1606/1607
© Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Foto: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut


Frans Francken d.J., Maria mit Kind und musizierenden Engeln in einer Blumengirlande, um 1620
© Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Foto: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut
Landschaft mit vielen Tieren

Jan Breughel, Die Erschaffung der Tiere© Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

Pieter Bruegel d. Ä., Nachfolger, Die Predigt Johannes des Täufers, um 1600© Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Foto: Steffen Lohse-Koch

Monomania 

 Rijksmuseum

4 July to 14 September, 2025


This summer, for the first time in the history of the Rijksmuseum, a contemporary artist has been invited to curate a major exhibition, spanning the entirety of the Philips Wing.

Entitled Monomania – Rijksmuseum’s 2025 summer exhibition will be curated by the internationally acclaimed Indonesia-born Dutch artist Fiona Tan, who represented the Netherlands at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Tan’s fascination with the birth of psychiatry at the beginning of the 19th century serves as the starting point for the exhibition that draws from Rijksmuseum’s extensive collection including works by Francisco Goya, Edvard Munch, Raden Saleh as well as Japanese masks and christening gowns




Théodore Géricault, Portrait of a Kleptomaniac, c. 1820–1824, Ghent, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 1908-F; gift of The Friends of the Museum Ghent, 1908.

Portrait of a Kleptomaniac (c. 1822) by the French artist Théodore Géricault (Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent) serves as the starting point for Fiona Tan’s research into the development of psychiatry at the beginning of the 19th century. The painting is part of Les Monomanes, a series of ten portraits of individuals believed to have an obsessive fixation. Only five of these paintings are still known today. Géricault, along with many other 19th century artists, was fascinated by the extremes of the psyche. They were keen to explore, like the physicians of the time, the idea that mental afflictions could be read upon the face.




Odilon Redon (signed by artist), Ophélie, la cape bleue sur les eaux (Ophelia with a Blue Wimple in the Water), 1900 - 1905, Rijksmuseum, Inv.no. SK-A-4840.


Edvard Munch, The Sin (Standing Nude with Red Hair), 1902, Rijksmuseum. inv.no. RP-P-1953 -888.



Kandinsky, Picasso, Miró et al. back in Lucerne

Kunstmuseum Luzern

July 5-November 2 2025


A superlative exhibition was mounted in the newly opened Kunstmuseum Luzern in 1935 featuring works by Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder and others. Whereas at the same time in National-Socialist Germany art by Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee or Piet Mondrian was being defamed as «degenerate», in 1935 the Kunstmuseum Luzern showed precisely these modernist positions, at the heart of an ever more totalitarian Europe. The Kunstmuseum Luzern made its mark internationally with the historic exhibition entitled These, Antithese, Synthese. To this very day, the exhibition is considered as «legendary», «inimitable» and «unsurpassable». The museum branch considers the 1935 exhibition to be impossible for a medium-sized institution like the Kunstmuseum Lucerne to reconstruct due to the high calibre of the art it displayed; this belief roused the current team’s ambition. So now, under the heading Kandinsky, Picasso, Miró et al. back in Lucerne, works will be presented that were on show in Lucerne back then, or that qualify as valid alternatives to works not available on loan, for whatever reasons. 

Over a period of more than five years, research was carried out on the almost one hundred works in the original 1935 exhibition. Most of them date from the 1920s and 30s and since then, by way of the art market, are owned by the world’s most prestigious museums or by private collectors. Other works have been lost, however, and some have even been destroyed. What is more, the research work was hampered by the unsatisfactory source situation. Not many papers dating from 1935 documenting the historic exhibition have been preserved. In addition to the exhibition catalogue, which has few illustrations, all that exists in Lucerne’s city archives is a scanty folder containing documents related to the exhibition. That it has been possible to get quite a large number of the original works on loan is all the more astonishing. 

Kandinsky, Picasso, Miró et al. back in Lucerne presents magnificent art. The celebrated works also draw attention to additional stories, as the historical context of the legendary 1935 exhibition These, Antithese, Synthese includes the emergence of modern art, resentment toward the avant-garde, fascism and communism. Kandinsky, Picasso, Miró et al. back in Lucerne conveys the intellectual, political and cultural turmoil of the period between the world wars. This exhibition therefore stands for a critical self-reflection on the part of the institution and its history. For contrary to the 1935 exhibition’s own aspiration to honour the promise of modernism and facilitate an alternative to capitalism and fascism, that exhibition clearly overlooked women or artists of non-European origins. 

The only presented female artist was Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Given that the three exhibition makers, Paul Hilber, Konrad Farner und Hans Erni, are known to have rejected Barbara Hepworth’s work, the exhibition Kandinsky, Picasso, Miró et al. back in Lucerne is including a large group of works by that artist. It is thus highlighting the history of modern art’s marginalised women artists, taking Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Barbara Hepworth as examples. 

The exhibition heightens our sensitivity to contexts. At the same time, it offers an overwhelming art spectacle for the senses in view of the fact that the art is, plainly and simply, inspirational. Viewers will have the special and unique opportunity to experience the brilliant works by modern art’s women pioneers gathered together at the Kunstmuseum Luzern. 

 Publication 



A comprehensive catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition, intensifying its cultural significance and illustrating it by a large number of reproductions. curated by Fanni Fetzer With Hans Arp, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Giorgio de Chirico, André Derain, Hans Erni, Max Ernst, Luis Fernández, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Juan Gris, Jean Hélion, Barbara Hepworth, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Ben Nicholson, Amédée Ozenfant, Wolfgang Paalen, Pablo Picasso, Sophie Taeuber-Arp 

These, Antithese, Synthese – reconstructed, 1935/2025, with essays by Fanni Fetzer, Stanislaus von Moos, Beni Muhl, Bettina Steinbrügge a. o., ed. by Kunstmuseum Luzern, Skira Edition, g/e, 336 pages, ISBN 978-88-572- 5395-4, –

Images




Joan Miró, Peinture, 1925, Öl auf Leinwand, 116 × 89 cm, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, München – Pinakothek der Moderne, Foto: Sibylle Forster, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen © Successió Miró / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich


Wassily Kandinsky,
Durchgehender Strich, 1923, Öl auf Leinwand, 140.8 × 202 × 2.7 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, erworben 1967 aus einer Spende des Westdeutschen Rundfunks, Foto: Walter Klein



Pablo Picasso, Head: Study for a Monument, 1929, Öl auf Leinwand, 73 × 59.7 cm, The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Trustee Corporation Fund (BMA 1966.41) © Successió Picasso / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich



Alberto Giacometti, Tête-crâne, 1934, Gips, 18.5 × 20 × 22.5 cm, Kunsthaus Zürich, Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung, Geschenk des Künstlers, 1965 © 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich, Foto: Stefan Altenburger



Fernand Léger, La liseuse, mère et enfant, 1922, Öl auf Leinwand, 73 × 116 cm, Privatsammlung, Schweiz © 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich



Barbara Hepworth, Large and Small Form, 1934, weisser Alabaster, 24.8 × 44.5 × 23.9 cm, The Pier Art Centre, Stromness, Orkney, Gift of Margaret Gardiner, 1979 © Hepworth Estate


Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Echelonnement, 1934, Öl auf Leinwand, 65 × 50.8 cm, Collection du Musée de Grenoble. Foto: Ville de Grenoble/Musée de Grenoble - J.L. Lacroix



Paul Cézanne, Boîte à lait et citron, II, 1879–80, Öl auf Leinwand, 22.2 × 44 cm, Sammlung Rosengart, Luzern

Hans Erni, Plastide, 1934, Öl auf Leinwand, 73 × 92 cm, Nachlass Hans Erni, Luzern, Foto: Andri Stadler



Hans Erni, Plakat zur Ausstellung These, Antithese, Synthese, 1935, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Foto: Andri Stadler




Wednesday, July 9, 2025

(Un)Settled: The Landscape in American Art

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art 

June 12– September 14, 2025


The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art presents (Un)Settled: The Landscape in American Art, a collaborative exhibition that explores the rich, complicated, and evolving topic of the American landscape, from its origins in 19th-century painting to the present. The exhibition is the culmination of a multi-year collaboration between four participating museums in the Art Bridges Cohort Program’s American South Consortium. (Un)Settled will be on view at the Wadsworth June 12– September 14, 2025. (Un)Settled uniquely brings together artworks from each of the partners’ collections to broaden the story of American art. 

The show presents a more expansive and complex view of landscape and its relationship to identity by including artwork spanning hundreds of years and representing regions across the United States and sites in Latin America. 

“In collaboration with our three nationally acclaimed museum partners through the Art Bridges Cohort Program, this show brings together selections of American art and material culture that are beautiful, poignant, and thought-provoking. The Wadsworth is proud to celebrate the significance of landscape across art history and its relevance in American art and visual culture. Additionally, the display of many incredible loans in this museum will provide visitors with a rich, meaningful experience,” says the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Director Matthew Hargraves. 

Why (Un)Settled? 

(Un)Settled highlights shifting attitudes toward landscape’s relevance and resonance in American art. This multidisciplinary show features over 60 works of art including baskets, ceramics, glass, photography, and painting. Building upon a central framework of the Wadsworth’s noted Hudson River School paintings, each section opens with an artwork from the nineteenth century in conversation with modern and contemporary interpretations. 

To present a more comprehensive history, the curatorial selection included the perspectives of Native American artists, women, and artists of color. (Un)Settled foregrounds multiple historic and cultural perspectives in each of its five thematic sections: The Beaten Path opens the show by revealing moments of connection and tension between people and their surroundings. Expanding Horizons features artists whose travels changed their perspectives and points of view. Counterpoints relates place and identity, foregrounding the experiences of individual. Seminatural explores the romanticization of our views, be they natural or urban, and attempts to impart order onto our surroundings. (Un)Settled closes the exhibition, reflecting upon this multifaceted term that addresses the movement of people over time, conversations about the significance of place, and how landscape relates to a dialogue about national identity. 

The exhibition in its totality reveals how artist’s impressions of the landscape are an enduring cultural touchpoint, and are inherently unsettled. There are through lines from historic to contemporary, such as environmental awareness which emerges in the first section in Thomas Cole’s 1827 View of the White Mountains and remains a central part of Jacqueline Bishop’s electrifying painting After the Rain (Methane) (2014–15), displayed in the final section. 

Similarly, contemporary artist Tom McGrath’s abstracted view of downtown Los Angeles appears alongside Albert Bierstadt’s romanticized topographical views of the American West, which McGrath cites as inspiration for his panoramic style. The juxtaposition of a traditional 19th-century Coast Salish basket with a contemporary response by glass artist Dan Friday (Lummi Nation, Coast Salish) brings to light the role of tradition and memory sustained over generations. 

William Christenberry’s photographs record specific places, primarily in the western part of his home state of Alabama, and reflect upon memory, transformation, and physical change wrought by time on landscape and the built environment. Similarly, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s black and white portraits of the Gullah Geechee on Daufuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina address disappearing or threatened cultural heritage and, in the artist,s words, “keep for the eyes of history the way Daufuskie was.” 

“From the local scenery to national parks, the individual to the communal, our cultural values and beliefs can be shaped by our surroundings. (Un)Settled reminds us of this through beautiful and compelling works of art,” says Erin Monroe, Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. 

Monroe worked with Laura Leonard, Art Bridges Project Coordinator and Curatorial Researcher on the final artist selection and interpretative materials. As Leonard stated, “This project was enriched by the dialogue we had with our partners and sharing different viewpoints on the topic. As a result, the exhibition includes several regional artists to expand beyond the familiar and expected.” 

For the Wadsworth’s presentation as the final venue for this traveling exhibition, the museum will include additional works from the permanent collection that further highlight the significance of artists relating to the landscape, such as Mark Dion’s sculptural display of objects excavated from the Seekonk River Providence Cabinet (2001) and Alma Thomas’s abstract painting Red Azaleas Jubliee (1976). 

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT), is the lead institution in the Art Bridges Cohort Program, centered on collection-sharing initiatives with its three partner museums: the Columbia Museum of Art (Columbia, SC), the Mobile Museum of Art (Mobile, AL), and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, AL). Together, the four institutions are known as the American South Consortium. An Art Bridges Foundation partnership (Un)Settled: The Landscape in American Art , a mid-sized exhibition, is one in a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art as part of the Art Bridges Cohort Program. 


Images 



Thomas Cole (1802–1848), View in the White Mountains, 1827. Oil on canvas. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Bequest of Daniel Wadsworth, 1848.17

Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (b. 1951) Jake with his boat arriving on Daufuskie’s shore , 1978. Columbia Museum of Art, Gift of Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, 1985.4.38 © Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe

 Jacqueline Bishop (b. 1955), After the Rain (Methane), 2014–2015. Oil on linen. MontgomeryMuseum of Fine Arts Association Purchase, 2018.7 © Jacqueline Bishop; 


Albert Bierstadt
In the Yosemite Valley

1866
89.2 x 127 cm
Oil on canvas
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford
Bequest of Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt


Washington Allston ~ Coast Scene on the Mediterranean, oil on canvas, 1811
Date1811
Mediumoil on canvas