American Paradise reframes the history of the Hudson River School to give visibility to the many women who were affiliated with this iconic movement but who have been largely omitted from the canon. Invoked critically, this project’s title is borrowed from American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, a 1987 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that perpetuates the mythology of the movement as being founded by–and comprised exclusively of–men.
In fact, as early as 1818—seven years before its ostensible founding in 1825—women were painting scenes of the Catskills and beyond in styles ascribed to the movement’s “founding fathers,” Asher Durand and Thomas Cole.
View Exhibitions:
American Paradise at Jack Barrett
Women Reframe American Landscape at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and traveling to the New Britain Museum of American Art
Value Studies at PATRON
ID: Formations of the Self at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center
View Press and Other Texts:
e-flux
Boston Globe
New York Times
Washington Post
Artnet
Hyperallergic
Art-agenda
American Paradise reframes the history of the Hudson River School to give visibility to the many women who were affiliated with this iconic movement but who have been largely omitted from the canon. Invoked critically, this project’s title is borrowed from American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, a 1987 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that perpetuates the mythology of the movement as being founded by–and comprised exclusively of–men.
In fact, as early as 1818—seven years before its ostensible founding in 1825—women were painting scenes of the Catskills and beyond in styles ascribed to the movement’s “founding fathers,” Asher Durand and Thomas Cole.
American Paradise is comprised of a series of trompe l’oeil paintings taking the form of in-progress copies that make visible the never-finished act of historical recovery, trompe l’oeil sculptures that imagine a correction to the Met’s 1987 exhibition catalog by inserting works by women artists into the frontispiece–a space originally occupied by Durand’s The Beeches, drawings functioning as revisions to historical documents that point to the selective and inconsistent nature of history, and print editions that visualize the surreptitious ways women transcended the constraints of their clothes and society.
View Exhibitions:
American Paradise at Jack Barrett
Women Reframe American Landscape at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and traveling to the New Britain Museum of American Art
Value Studies at PATRON
ID: Formations of the Self at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center
View Related Press and Other Texts:
e-flux
Boston Globe
New York Times
Washington Post
Artnet
Hyperallergic
Art-agenda
