SELECT EXHIBITIONS AND OTHER PROJECTS
Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era
This survey of the life and work of American painter Susan Watkins explores how she and other women artists carved paths to success at the turn of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned only a little more than fifteen years, American artist Susan Watkins (1875–1913) reached the heights of her profession, exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon and earning accolades among the American art press. This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue offer a close look at Watkins’s story and consider how women artists of the era overcame barriers within the institutions that structured the professional art world, often through training and exhibiting at established and traditional settings.
A Shared Vision: The Macon and Joan Brock Collection of American Art
This exhibition and its catalogue showcase one of the most significant collections of American art assembled in the twenty-first century and one that has helped transform the Chrysler Museum into a national leader in the exhibition, study, and appreciation of American art. The Macon and Joan Brock Collection spans nearly one hundred years, from just after the Civil War to the mid-twentieth century. Works by a wide range of artists, from Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent to Marsden Hartley, Max Weber, and George Bellows, chart a broad history of American art. Less well-known figures such as Mary Fairchild MacMonnies, Helen Corson Hovenden, and Sally Michel bolster the rich depth of the collection and propose new contours to the shape of American art history.
Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820-1920
Americans in Spain explored a pivotal moment, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when American artists and their European counterparts flocked to Spain to capture its scenic charms and seemingly exotic customs. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue featured works by Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Robert Henri, John Singer Sargent, and others alongside their Spanish contemporaries and the country’s Old Masters. The exhibition included more than seventy paintings alongside nineteenth-century photographs, prints, and travel guides. The works on view were borrowed from a wide range of national and international collections including the Prado Museum as well as a newly discovered painting by Mary Cassatt never before shown in the United States.
Edward Steichen: In Exaltation of Flowers
This exhibition featured Edward Steichen’s grand mural series, In Exaltation of Flowers. This large-scale mural, which measures ten feet high and nearly forty feet wide altogether, was borrowed from Art Bridges. The mural’s seven panels were paired with works from the Chrysler’s rich photography and decorative arts holdings that illuminate Steichen’s photographic career. The groupings highlighted the broader impact of the figures depicted in the painting, including Isadora Duncan, Mercedes de Cordoba, and Charles Lang Freer. Also included were examples from the Chrysler’s holdings of Camera Work, an influential art and photography journal published by Alfred Stieglitz.
Featuring a wealth of archival images, including models, paintings, drawings, and prints, this volume presents compelling essays that engage broad themes of history, ethics, philosophy, classicism, neoclassicism, and social sciences while investigating various aspects of Jefferson’s works, design principles, and complex character. In addition to a thorough introduction to Jefferson’s career as an architect, the project provides insight into his sources of inspiration and a nuanced take on the contradictions between his ideas about liberty and his embrace of slavery. Thomas Jefferson, Architect offers fresh perspectives on Jefferson’s architectural legacy, which has shaped the political and social landscape of the nation and influenced countless American architects since his time.
Catching Sight: The World of the British Sporting Print
This exhibition sheds new light on a common, but often overlooked aspect of British art: the British Sporting Print. Featuring more than 100 prints, Catching Sight demonstrates the aesthetic sophistication and accomplishments of the genre. The exhibition takes an innovative approach to the subject, examining these works of art from an art historical perspective rather than simply as documents of the history of sport and rural culture. Catching Sight is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue by Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator, with contributions from Malcolm Cormack, and Corey Piper.