The Exhibition Program incorporates major works from national and regional museums as well as works from the Academy Art Museum's own Permanent Collection, which consists of works on paper and contemporary works by American and European masters.

National collaborations have included work from the Smithsonian, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Vitra Design Museum, the Brandywine River Museum, Winterthur, the Walters Art Museum, Syracuse University, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Annual Members' Exhibition
June 6 - July 19, 2008

Celebrating the artistic endeavors of its active members and represents a rich and diverse collection of work, ranging from traditional painting styles and three-dimensional pieces to contemporary treatments and mediums.  Some works will be available for purchase. An Academy Art Museum tradition for almost 50 years, this year's exhibition welcomes judge Ross Merrill, Chief of Conservation at the National Gallery of Art.

Image:  Rob Brownlee-Tomasso, Contopus Stamineum, acrylic & earth on canvas textured with soil from Adkins Arboretum, 42" x 51" $1,800.

European and American Prints:
Through to September 2008

The Impressionist Era features a selection of ten works, ranging from James McNeill Whistler Portrait of Drouet of 1859 to Frank W. Benson’s Rocky River from 1921 and demonstrates two trends that can be credited to the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe:  Impressionism and the revival of etching as a creative medium.

As painting outdoors (en plein-air) was gaining momentum in the United States and Europe, artists readily embraced the emerging style with its signature bravura brushwork and expanding subject matter including one’s mundane surroundings.  Nearly simultaneous to that development, Whistler and Seymour Haden in the 1850s were among the most influential British artists credited with revising etching, a form of printing, to an eager group of European and American artists. While mechanically produced etchings may not be done en plein-air, their imagery is dependent on the rapidly emerging style of the French and American Impressionists.

Frank Weston Benson (American, 1862-1951), Portrait of a Child, 1912.  Etching & Drypoint.  Collection of Academy Art Museum.  Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert K. Keller.

While the National Gallery of Art continues renovations of its American galleries, the Academy Art Museum will host Feast for the Eyes: American Masterworks from the National Gallery of Art through August 30, 2008. This very special exhibition of works on loan from the National Gallery of Art features paintings by John Frederick Peto, Joseph Decker and James Peale.

Joseph Decker, Green Plums, circa 1885. Oil on canvas, 9 x 10 15/16 inches. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, image courtesy of the Board of Trustees National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

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