Today, tomorrow (Oct. 3) final days of exhibit, In American Waters: The Sea in American Paintings, at Peabody Essex Museum.
Don’t be distracted by a simplistic thematic construct especially when it coaxes a mind game of “What about…?” as in: What about this artist or that one? Why aren’t they included? (Visual artists like May Stevens, Vija Celmins, Blanche Lazzell, Juane Quick to see Smith, April Gornik, Joan Nelson, Duncanson, Eric Aho, Morris graves, Rauschenberg, Fischl, Frankenthaler, Fitz Henry Lane, Winslow Hopper, and Edward Hopper sprang readily to mind. And more Lawrence.) What about the de rigueur annual summer exhibitions at major galleries and institutions, since late 1880s? Aren’t the planet’s oceans a global motif not limited by media or place?
Ignore the categories or “chapters”.
Forget the sea change promise.
Just go.
Do make the must see trip to be awed and enjoy the momentous loans and great gift of seeing these selections displayed, together and their many moods of expression. Sensuous, tranquil, volatile, mysterious, distant, abstract–this major group show delivers art that conveys emotion, expressed and experienced.
installation view photos
photos: c. ryan, May 29, 2021
Stunning installation design
*mostly (scroll through till end for some misses)
individual works
in no particular order
Animated some to help bring you there:
Museum wall labels – 3d letters, Frederick Douglass quote
Major American lending institutions and private collections including:
Crystal Bridges
Crystal Bridges partnered with PEM, so naturally most loans were procured from Arkansas.
William Trost Richards; Richard Diebenkorn; Frank Benson; Amy Sherald; Marsden Hartley
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Charles Sheeler; Jan Matulka
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
William Trost Richards
New York, Metropolitan Museum
John Frederick Kensett
Collection of New York City
John Wesley Jarvis
Navy Art Collection
Hughie Lee Smith; Paul Cadmus
American Civil War Museum
Conrad Wise Chapman
Phillips Collection
John Sloan
Smithsonian
Stuart Davis; Hughie Lee Smith
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Cuneo
Brooklyn Museum
Rockwell Kent
MoMa Museum of Modern Art
Fletcher Martin
Wadsworth Athenaeum
Kensett
Cahoon Museum American Art
North Carolina Museum of Art
Luks
This show was also billed as one exhibition comprising PEM’s **new** Climate and Environmental Initiative. **Includes iconic American homoerotic art – Cadmus Fleet’s In and Fletcher Martin**
Installation views and museum labels more of a miss
Waters elsewhere on view from the Peabody Essex Museum
Josh Simpson megaplanet glass earth, 1989
Michael C. McMillen detail of The Pequod II
Sea Coco
installation view Rockman exhibit, May 29, 2021, see more here
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Good Morning Gloucester 