Art Review: American Stories and The Americans -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (403 hits)
American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 Special Exhibition Galleries, 2nd floor Through 1/24/2010
If you are in New York please stop by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for two of the best special exhibits, American Stories and The Americans. These paintings and photographs bring American history, values, and morals to life.
Some of my favorite paintings reflect the relationships between Blacks and whites prior to and during the Civil War also the status of women during the 19th Century. From the viewpoint of the artist you can see the concept of Manifest Destiny, (great for Europeans, not so good for Native Americans). Actually that idea is better represented within the paintings located in the Robert Lehman Wing, American Landscapes.
There are paintings by Mary Cassett, the only woman to exhibit with the Impressionists; William McGregor Paxton and Thomas Wilmer Dewing. The paintings by William McGregor Paxton, Tea Leaves, 1909, The Breakfast, 1911 and the one particular painting by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, A Reading, 1897 reflected the dichotomy of the Gilded Age where upper class women were seen as objects, representing the aesthetics of their husbands and society’s tastes.
Though white women were seen as the purveyors of culture, women of that class were birds in gilded cages. For a written viewpoint of this attitude towards women please read the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In fact you might contrast that with the Black Woman’s reality as stated by Sojourner Truth in her speech “Ain’t I a Woman” delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
Black Women living during the 18th and 19th centuries did not have the niceties afforded to them as did white women. We may have been refined but never delicate. Even to this day we still have discussions regarding the “Strong Black Woman” regarding her standing in the Black community. Speaking of Strong Black Women when you are in American Stories please take time to carefully examine William Sidney Mount’s, Eel Spearing at Setauket, 1845.
Particular favorites of mine which I felt presented Black Americans in a favorable and realistic manner are the following paintings:
Christian Friedrich Mayr (American, 1803–1851) Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, 1838 William Sidney Mount (American, 1807–1868) The Power of Music, 1847 Richard Caton Woodville (American, 1825–1855) War News from Mexico, 1848 Charles Felix Blauvelt (American, 1824–1900) A German Immigrant Inquiring His Way, 1855
Another fantastic special exhibit Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010 Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs and The Howard Gilman Gallery, 2nd floor
Could be the modern companion piece to American Stories. For exhibit overviews please go to:
