Crystal Bridges Presents: American Encounters: Genre Painting and Everyday Life
by January 3, 2013 2:19 pm 90 views
An International Collaboration
American Encounters: Genre Painting and Everyday Life
May 11 through August 12
American Encounters is a partnership project forged last year between Crystal Bridges, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, and the musée du Louvre in Paris. Each year, the group produces an intimate, focused traveling exhibition featuring artworks chosen from each of the partner institutions. This year’s offering, Genre Painting and Everyday Life, will be on view at Crystal Bridges from May 11 through August 12. Genre painting — narrative scenes depicting the everyday activities of “stock” or “typed” characters — flourished in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. These paintings captivated American audiences and helped to express a distinctly “American” character, often through the exploration of racial, regional, or class differences. This exhibition of five paintings includes works by George Caleb Bingham, Eastman Johnson, and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait — American painters whose works illustrate three very different cultural experiences within the greater context of the United States. These will be exhibited alongside two paintings from the Louvre that present the Dutch and English schools which helped to inspire American genre artists. The exhibition will debut at the Louvre from Jan. 23 – Apr. 22, 2013, and will travel to the High Museum of Art (Sept. 14, 2013- Jan. 14, 2014), following its stop at Crystal Bridges. There will be no fee to view this exhibition.
Supported locally in part by Crystal Bridges’ Global Initiative Fund, Stella Boyle Smith Trust, and Chuck and Terri Erwin.