New York Art Gallery Opens Reinstallation Of American Collection

The 114 works range from the Colonial era, exemplified by John Singleton Copley's unfinished portrait (ca. 1762) of Boston silversmith Nathaniel Hurd, to politically charged mixed-media pieces by contemporary artists Jaune Quick-to- See Smith, Christian Boltanski and Binh Danh. In between are works by such masters as Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Thomas Eakins, John Sloan, George Bellows, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Jacob Lawrence and Dale Chihuly.

Of particular interest, Georgia O'Keeffe's Jawbone and Fungus (1937) is displayed for the first time in a plexiglas case that allows visitors to see the brightly colored, unfinished abstract painting on the reverse-a painting that dates to the 1920s and that the artist abandoned for reasons unknown.

Three galleries are grouped chronologically-"Art of a Young Nation" (Colonial era-1900); "Controversy and Change" (1900-1950); and "Art and Ideas" (1950-the present). A fourth, "Focus on Rochester," brings together such works with local connections as Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, Maxfield Parrish's Interlude (The Lute Players), Fritz Trautman's Galaxy and Wendell Castle's Last Judgment.

An adjacent 2,000-square-foot gallery, renovated in 2002, houses American decorative and folk arts. A century of commitment 'Seeing America' documents the Gallery's longstanding commitment to building an outstanding collection of American art. As early as 1913, the year of its founding, MAG was championing and acquiring such major works as John Twachtman's masterful White Bridge. Nearly a century later, the American collection continues to grow and diversify, as illustrated by three newly acquired works-an 1800 tall case clock by Simon Willard, a 1937 modernist painting by Irene Rice Pereira, and photodocumentary print by Binh Danh from the 2006 exhibition Extreme Materials.

A large part of the collection has been on storage in recent months, while the Gallery utilized two of the galleries in "Seeing America" for My America: Art from The Jewish Museum Collection, 1900-1955. This major traveling exhibition was on view in fall 2006, concurrently with Georgia O'Keeffe: Color and Conservation. The unprecedented need for exhibition space offered a perfect opportunity to plan for an enhanced presentation of one of Memorial Art Gallery's pre-eminent collections. -- mag.rochester.edu