A Panorama of Pittsburgh
at the Frick through 10/5
Learn about Pittsburgh's past by viewing more than 130 printed views of the city.
Meissonier masterpiece
now on view at the Frick
1806, Jena is on view at the Frick through May 31, 2009.
This Sunday is
RADical Day at the Frick
Visit the Frick on 10/5 for a full day of activities and fun!
Rob Rogers discusses
political cartooning on 10/12
The Post-Gazette's award-winning editorial cartoonist will discuss his experiences covering the 2008 presidential campaign and conventions.
Music for Exhibitions
begins new season 11/18
Join Katherine Soroka and Chatham Baroque for an evening of memorable music.
View photos from the 2008 H. C. Frick Horseless Carriage Tour
Twenty-six teams of drivers made it a day of fun.
Sign up for the
Frick e-newsletter
Each month, receive the latest information about exhibitions; programs for adults, families, children, and teachers; events; specials at The Café and the Museum Shop; and more.
at the Frick through 10/5
Learn about Pittsburgh's past by viewing more than 130 printed views of the city.
Meissonier masterpiece
now on view at the Frick
1806, Jena is on view at the Frick through May 31, 2009.
This Sunday is
RADical Day at the Frick
Visit the Frick on 10/5 for a full day of activities and fun!
Rob Rogers discusses
political cartooning on 10/12
The Post-Gazette's award-winning editorial cartoonist will discuss his experiences covering the 2008 presidential campaign and conventions.
Music for Exhibitions
begins new season 11/18
Join Katherine Soroka and Chatham Baroque for an evening of memorable music.
View photos from the 2008 H. C. Frick Horseless Carriage Tour
Twenty-six teams of drivers made it a day of fun.
Sign up for the
Frick e-newsletter
Each month, receive the latest information about exhibitions; programs for adults, families, children, and teachers; events; specials at The Café and the Museum Shop; and more.
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April 27, 2006 - July 9, 2006 |
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On April, 27, 2006, an exhibition of 39 rarely exhibited drawings of the Hudson River School from the collection of Dia Art Foundation opens at The Frick Art Museum. Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation was organized by The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College to celebrate the May 2003 opening in the Hudson River Valley of Dia:Beacon, a museum that houses the permanent collection of Dia Art Foundation, a contemporary art organization based in New York City. The drawings included in the exhibition were assembled by one of Dia’s principal artists, Dan Flavin (1933–1996), during the late 1970s and early 1980s when he and Dia were planning a museum for his own work in the Hudson River Valley. Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation will be augmented at The Frick Art Museum by an ancillary exhibition organized by the Frick’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions, Tom Smart, entitled THE EXHIBITIONS Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation comprises 39 pencil, ink and charcoal sketches and two oil studies from Dia Art Foundation’s collection of Hudson River School drawings, which is on extended loan to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. The collection was assembled during the late 1970s and early 1980s by Dan Flavin, an artist who benefited from Dia’s patronage. A long-time resident of the Hudson River Valley, Dan Flavin’s well-known installations of fluorescent lights infuse gallery spaces with variously colored light, turning them into glowing abstract environments of line and color. He acknowledged the light and the landscape of the valley, as well as the work of his nineteenth-century predecessors, as influential on his art. Flavin also worked with Dia on plans, which were never realized, to display his own work alongside the nineteenth-century landscape drawings in a museum in the Hudson Valley. Advanced by the British-born painter Thomas Cole, the Hudson River School grew to be the most influential manifestation of landscape painting in nineteenth-century America. Sharing the philosophy of the American Transcendentalists, Hudson River School painters created visual embodiments of the Romantic ideals about which authors like Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman wrote. Their works celebrated our vast nation with a sense of awe for its majestic natural resources and a feeling of optimism for the huge potential it held. Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation includes sketches that present a wide range of Hudson River School subjects: from Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York and the valleys of the Catskill Mountains in southern New York to mountainous, picturesque sites abroad. In these locales, the confluence of land and sky wrapped in light and atmosphere was of primary interest for Hudson River School artists. Back in their studios, these artists would consult their drawings in order to interpret and refine on canvas their fervent response to nature. The exhibition concentrates on drawings by John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872) and Aaron Draper Shattuck (1832–1928). Kensett, a leading Hudson River School painter at mid-century, made numerous seasonal sketching trips in the United States and abroad. Between 1840 and 1847, his sketching tours and studies took him to locales in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, where he executed elegant ink and pencil drawings that reflected his indebtedness to the harmonious landscape ideal of seventeenth-century French painter Claude Lorraine (1600–1682). Like other Hudson River School painters, Kensett also spent much time sketching landscape scenery in New York and New England. He came to be associated with artists known as “Luminists,” so called because of their experiments with the effects of light on water and sky. Aaron Draper Shattuck was a friend of Kensett’s and was also associated with the White Mountain School of Hudson River painters. Unlike Kensett, however, Shattuck appears not to have traveled abroad, but rather studied portrait painting during the first half of the 1850s and drawing at New York’s National Academy of Design in 1852. The drawings in the exhibition illustrate Shattuck’s use of the white of the sheet to evoke the light of the season and almost tangible airiness of location. In addition to works by Shattuck and Kensett, the exhibition includes sketches by Franklin Anderson (1844–1891), Samuel Colman (1832–1920), Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900), Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823 –1880), Robert Havell Jr. (1793–1878), and James David Smillie (1833 –1909). Catalogue An illustrated checklist of works included in Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation will be available to visitors for a small contribution at The Frick Art Museum. Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation was organized by The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, with support from the Smart Family Foundation, Inc. The Pittsburgh presentation is made possible, in part, through a generous grant from the Allegheny Foundation. Dan Flavin. drawing water light On view concurrently with Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation, this exhibition comprises a selection of 98 small sketches and drawings, presented in 19 framed sets, from the 1960s and 70s that Flavin made along the shores of the Hudson River and the southern coast of Long Island, as well as one of Flavin’s light works that has an affinity to the landscape. These works have been generously lent by the Flavin estate and a private collector. One of the most important and innovative artists of his era, Dan Flavin’s oeuvre was recently examined in the national touring exhibition, Dan Flavin: A Retrospective. Organized by Dia Art Foundation in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Dan Flavin retrospective premiered at the National Gallery of Art in 2004 before traveling to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in 2005. Assistance for the current exhibition at the Frick was provided by Tiffany Bell, Director, Dan Flavin Catalogue Raisonné Project and co-curator of the recent Flavin retrospective with Michael Govan, the former President and Director of Dia Art Foundation. Flavin's sculptures of fluorescent lights in white and various colors turn gallery spaces into glowing abstract art environments. He assembled the earlier works, and it is this attraction to the qualities and nuances of light that makes his interest in the Hudson River School so intriguing. The effects of light upon a landscape were a central preoccupation for the nineteenth-century Hudson River School artists. Dan Flavin was an inveterate draftsman. His drawings seek to express his direct experience of a particular time and place. Their lively energy and dynamic, gestural style that is evident in Crow’s Nest, a 1965 drawing, testify to Flavin’s enormous creative spirit. By drawing from the landscape, he wanted to interpret not only its unique qualities and energy, but he wanted his drawings to serve as existential traces of his encounter with the land, sky and light, and the people who moved in and through his field of perception as he drew. As a result, these drawings have an expressive kinetic energy and, as such, are analogous to his light sculptures, whose radiant energy illuminates and alters our perceptions of place. Dan Flavin. drawing water light was organized by the Frick Art & Historical Center in association with Tiffany Bell and Stephen Flavin. This exhibition is made possible, in part, through a generous grant from the Allegheny Foundation. Regarding the exhibitions, Frick Director Bill Bodine comments, “The Frick is privileged to provide Pittsburgh residents with an opportunity to view a selection of Dia Art Foundation’s rarely exhibited artistic studies of the effects of light from the nineteenth-century Hudson River School artists. The complementary group of twentieth-century works by Dan Flavin, one of the most prominent American artists of recent decades, underlines a little known aspect of his creative process and curiosity. He was inspired by these artists and, in turn, developed their legacy as artists of light.” About the Dia Art Foundation Dia Art Foundation was founded in New York City in 1974 to commission and support American and European contemporary art. Dia presents its permanent collection—which concentrates on work by Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Joseph Beuys, and other major American and European artists—at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, sited on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon, New York. Exhibitions and public programming are presented at Dia:Chelsea, in New York City, and long-term, site-specific projects are presented in the western United States, in New York City and on Long Island. EXHIBITION ORGANIZATIONAL AND SUPPORT CREDITS Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation was organized by The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, with support from the Smart Family Foundation, Inc. The Pittsburgh presentation is made possible, in part, through a generous grant from the Allegheny Foundation. Dan Flavin. drawing water light was organized by the Frick Art & Historical Center in association with Tiffany Bell and Stephen Flavin. This exhibition is made possible, in part, through a generous grant from the Allegheny Foundation. GENERAL INFORMATION The Frick Art & Historical Center is located at 7227 Reynolds Street in Point Breeze. Free parking is available in the Frick’s off-street lot, or along adjacent streets. The Frick is open 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Tuesday–Sunday, and closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission to The Frick Art Museum, Car and Carriage Museum, Greenhouse, and Playhouse is free. Docent-led tours of the art museum are offered free of charge every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. (Groups of five or more should schedule a private tour, available for $5 per person.) Tours of Clayton are available Tuesday through Sunday; reservations are recommended. Admission is $10 for the general public and $8 for students and seniors. For information and reservations, call 412-371-0600, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Sunday. For further information or images, please contact Greg Langel at the Frick Art & Historical Center at 412-371-0600, ext. 524, or at glangel@frickart.org. |
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![John Frederick Kensett (American, 1816 – 1872), <i>Cattskill Mt. [sic]</i., c. 1848-49, Graphite on wove
paper, 9 3/4 x 1411/16 inches, Dia Art Foundation, 80.296. From the exhibition <i>Hudson River School Drawings from Dia Art Foundation</i>.](/exhibition_photos/308/100x100_JFK_Catskill_Mt.jpg)
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