"This Land: Considering the American Landscape," a transhistorical exhibition organized by Donna De Salvo and Seph Rodney, will open at The Church on Sunday and continue through Sept. 6.
A conversation with the two curators and Sheri Pasquarella, the executive director of the Sag Harbor cultural center, will happen Saturday. The discussion, with tickets at $10, is set for 5 p.m. and already sold out, with a waiting-list link on the website. A free reception and tour of the exhibition will follow from 6 to 7:30.
Timed with the nation's semiquincentennial, the show explores artistic responses to the American landscape both at its inception and today. Artists include Jeremy Dennis, Thomas Doughty, Asher B. Durand, Christina Fernandez, April Gornik, Leslie Hewitt, Sky Hopinka, An-My Le, Zoe Leonard, Richard Mayhew, and Charles Henry Miller.
Works by Kent Monkman, Mary Nimmo Moran, Thomas Moran, Arcmanoro Niles, James Perkins, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Lucy Raven, Anastasia Samoylova, Meg Webster, selections from Dan Flavin's collection of Hudson River School paintings and works on paper, and a contribution from the Center for Land Use Interpretation will also be on view.
The presentation will feature important works by artists associated with the Hudson River School, often thought to be the first true American art movement, among them Durand, Doughty, the Morans, Ryder, and others.
"The Hudson River School artists were inspired by the vastness and overwhelming beauty of the American landscape, particularly in the Hudson Valley," said De Salvo. "They sought to depict what they saw as the sublime, awe-inspiring quality of the natural world, a romanticized view that often omitted signs of industry and the presence of Indigenous peoples. This exhibition brings into dialogue works by some of its artists and contemporary figures who continue to draw inspiration from the American landscape, making visible what is often obscured and underscoring the ways the past remains embedded in the present."
The Parrish Art Museum is contributing six Hudson River School paintings, highlighting its role in presenting American art. A painting by Thomas Moran, who lived and worked in East Hampton, will come from Guild Hall. The Dia Art Foundation is lending selections from Dan Flavin’s personal collection of Hudson River School works on paper, which Dia received as part of the Flavin Foundation's integration with the museum, a partnership that also included the founding of Dia Bridgehampton and the Dan Flavin Art Institute.
"Part of what we've aimed to do," said Seph Rodney, "is show how a mythology, subtly and explicitly advanced by the Hudson River School, of a sublime, idealized landscape that presupposes a particular viewer, gets subsequently upended by contemporary artists who show that issues regarding labor, Indigenous life, national borders, social class aspirations, and the materials of the earth itself are all bound up with the American landscape and deserve exploration."
From the foundation of 19th-century American painting and works on paper, the exhibition turns its focus to artists of the recent past and present, including painting, photography, video, sculpture, mixed-media work, and performance. Taken together, the contemporary works explore currents in artistic forms and practices, conceptual underpinnings and approaches, and/or sociopolitical or ideological expressions, according to The Church.
Currently the senior adjunct curator at the Dia Art Foundation, De Salvo has over 30 years of curatorial experience, including 15 years as the inaugural chief curator and deputy director of programs as the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her other curatorial posts have included London's Tate Modern, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, the Parrish Art Museum, where she was the Robert Lehman Curator, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Rodney is a former senior art critic and opinions editor for Hyperallergic and a frequent contributor to The New York Times. He has also written for CNN, NBC, The Guardian, Artforum, and Art in America. The author of "The Personalization of the Museum Visit," he is now working on a book about learning how to look at art, tentatively titled "A Certain Minor Light."
The exhibition will be accompanied by concerts, performances, lectures, and a tour.
