River Crossings: Contemporary Art Comes Home

“RIVER CROSSINGS” EXHIBITION WILL BRING CONTEMPORARY ART BY WORLDRENOWNED ARTISTS BACK TO THE HOMES WHERE DISTINCTLY AMERICAN ART WAS BORN, CREATING AN UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE.
 

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site and The Olana Partnership/Olana State Historic Site are co-hosting a landmark exhibition of contemporary art to highlight the pivotal role that the two historic properties – and the artists who lived and worked there – played in shaping America’s culture of contemporary art.
 

APT artis Valerie Hegarty is participating The exhibition – “River Crossings: Contemporary Art Comes Home”, an exhibition that will provide an unprecedented opportunity for visitors to consider these historic spaces from a completely new vantage point – that of experiencing contemporary art in these iconic settings. The exhibition is curated by Stephen Hannock, the celebrated painter, and Jason Rosenfeld, PhD, the art historian who recently curated two enormously popular exhibitions at Tate Britain in London and the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

Thirty Artists Including Chuck Close, Maya Lin, Martin Puryear, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith will illuminate the Pivotal Role that Hudson River School Artists Thomas Cole and Frederic Church Played in Shaping an Innovative Culture of American Art Catskill and Hudson, NY – February 11, 2015

A fully-illustrated companion book will be published by The Artist Book Foundation and will include entries by Rosenfeld on all the artists and works, and reflections by such preeminent writers and historians as Maurice Berger, Ken Burns, Adam Gopnik, and Marvin Heiferman. The exhibition will take place in the residences and surrounding landscapes of the Thomas Cole Historic Site – home of Thomas Cole (1801-1848), founder of the Hudson River School of art, the first distinctly American art movement – and Olana, the 250-acre home and landscape created by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Cole’s student, who became world-renowned as the School’s leading practitioner. The properties lie two miles apart, directly across the Hudson River from each other and connected by a bridge.

The artists whose work is included in the exhibition are: Romare Bearden, Elijah Burgher, Chuck Close, Will Cotton, Gregory Crewdson, Lynn Davis, Jerry Gretzinger, Don Gummer, Duncan Hannah, Stephen Hannock, Valerie Hegarty, Angie Keefer with Kara Hamilton and Kianja Strobert, Charles LeDray, Maya Lin, Frank Moore, Elizabeth Murray, Rashaad Newsome, Thomas Nozkowski, Stephen Petegorsky, Martin Puryear, Cindy Sherman, Sienna Shields, Kiki Smith, Joel Sternfeld, Letha Wilson, and Elyn Zimmerman, in addition to selected complementary work by Thomas Cole and Frederic Church from the permanent collections.