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Closed on Tuesdays
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San Marino, CA 91108
Taxing Visions
Exhibitions
1 of 3
David Gilmour Blythe (1815–1865), Art versus Law, 1859–60, oil on canvas, 24 × 35 13⁄16 in. Brooklyn Museum. Dick Ramsay Fund.
James Henry Cafferty (1819–1869) and Charles G. Rosenberg (1818–1879), Wall Street, Half Past Two O'Clock, October 13, 1857, 1858, oil on canvas, 50 × 40 in. Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Honorable Irwin Untermeyer.
Alfred Kappes (1850–1894), Tattered and Torn, 1886, oil on canvas, 40 × 32 in. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass. Purchased with the Beatrice Oenslager Chace, Class of 1928, Fund; the Rita Rich Fraad, Class of 1937, Fund for American Art; the Kathleen Compton Sherrerd, Class of 1954, Fund for American Art; and with restricted acquisition funds
Past eventSat., Jan. 29, 2011, 12 a.m.–Tue., May 31, 2011, 11:59 p.m.
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing
A new exhibition interprets the economic depression of the late 19th century.
A new exhibition interprets the economic depression of the late 19th century
Taxes, rent, economic depression, and financial inequity: Sound familiar? If the words conjure up contemporary headlines rather than works of art, it’s not surprising. But in fact, these themes are the subject of a new exhibition. “Taxing Visions: Financial Episodes in Late Nineteenth-Century American Art” opens Jan. 29 and continues through May 30 in the Chandler Wing of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries.
Organized jointly by The Huntington and the Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University, the exhibition challenges conventional wisdom about the period. Although the late 19th century is identified artistically with leisure-laden landscapes, abundant still lifes, and class-conscious portraiture, American artists also turned their attention to the financial and occupational turmoil that marked the Reconstruction, Gilded Age, and early Progressive eras. The 34 works in “Taxing Visions,” which are on loan from 31 museums and private collections, demonstrate with sometimes startling clarity the experience of economic downturn.
A diverse group of artists is represented in the exhibition, including William Michael Harnett, George Inness, Eastman Johnson, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Some worked in traditional academic styles and others in proto-modernist modes of Impressionism and Tonalism, depicting people from every income level and geographic region of the country—from the robber barons of Wall Street to homeless children hawking newspapers. The works relate closely to The Huntington’s permanent installation in the Scott Galleries.
“This exhibition sets the works in our American art collection in their social and economic context,” said John Murdoch, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Collections. “But it also celebrates the benefits of academic collaboration. The curators have created a thought-provoking experience for visitors with carefully selected examples illuminating a theme that’s at once timely and timeless.”
Kevin Murphy, the Bradford and Christine Mishler Associate Curator of American Art at The Huntington, and Leo Mazow, the former curator of American art at the Palmer Museum and now associate professor of art history at the University of Arkansas, co-curated “Taxing Visions” and co-wrote the accompanying catalog.
