Exhibitions

The 2011 exhibitions are closed.

"Rally 'Round the Flag: Frederic Edwin Church and the Civil War"
The Evelyn and Maurice Sharp Gallery
Open Tuesday- Sunday, May 26-October 30, 2011 | 10am-4pm 

Two weeks before the scheduled debut of Hudson River School landscape painter Frederic Church's masterwork The Icebergs, Fort Sumter was bombarded marking the start of the American Civil War. Instead of cancelling the unveiling of the painting at Goupil's Gallery, Church  re-titled his masterpiece: "The North" Church's Picture of Icebergs showing his support for the northern cause.
Church also pledged exhibition fees to assist the Union's Patriotic Fund for the families of Union soldiers. Less than a month later, in further support, and in response to the patriotic fever that swept the North, in May 1861 Church painted "Our Banner in the Sky" – a sunrise resembling a Union Flag. The image became a popular chromolithograph issued by Goupil & Co. 2011 will mark the  Sesquicentennial of the fall of Fort Sumter and the start of the Civil War. Olana's exhibition will examine Church's reaction to the conflict as an artist and how events involving his friends and colleagues affected him personally.The exhibition will include: 4 oil sketches by Church; 2 pencil sketches by Church; 2 chromolithographs after Church; and works by Isaac Hayes and John Jameson.

In conjunction with the exhibition, "Rally 'round the Flag: Frederic Edwin Church and the Civil War," Dr. Kevin J. Avery has written a wonderful essay related to the exhibition for the academic journal The Hudson River Valley Review, a publication of the Hudson River Valley Institute (HRVI) at Marist College. The journal is available for sale at The Olana Museum Store, or through HRVI. Click here to learn more about HRVI or to obtain a copy through subscription. Dr Avery has also contributed an article on the John S. Jameson section of the exhibition for the August issue of American Art Review - on newsstands now. Please click here to read an expanded version of that essay with complete historical references.

Dr. Avery is a senior research scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Olana is very grateful to all our generous lenders, who have graciously allowed for these paintings to be included in the exhibition, and reproduced in related articles.  

The exhibition was made possible through the generous support of:   
The Lois H. and Charles A. Miller Jr. Foundation

and the following:
Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Fund for Columbia County
Mr. and Mrs. Brock Ganeles
The Ann and Arthur Grey Foundation
Laura and David Grey
The Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area
Henry and Sharon Martin
Chas A. Miller III
The New York State Council on the Arts
The Olana Exhibition Fund
Gary Schiro and Robert Burns
Richard T. Sharp
Susan Winokur and Paul Leach   

We are particularly grateful to Henry and Sharon Martin for their commitment and dedication to
supporting the development of high-quality publications in conjunction with Olana exhibitions.
 
The Trustees and staff of The Olana Partnership wish to recognize the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo; New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Commissioner Rose Harvey; Division for Historic Preservation and Acting Deputy Commissioner for Historic Preservation Ruth Pierpont; Director for the Bureau of Historic Sites John Lovell; Acting Regional Director, Taconic Region Garrett Jobson; and Olana Site Manager Linda McLean.

The exhibition is greatly enriched by generous loans from the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center, New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, Saratoga Springs New York and the private collections of Anonymous, Laura and David Grey, and Richard T. Sharp. For their assistance with these loans we would like to express our appreciation to Patricia Everett, Laura and David Grey, Betty Krulik, Loie and Alex Acevedo, and Frederic W. Lapham III.


With additional support provided by public funds
from the Hudson RiverValley National Heritage Area
and the Museum Program of the New York State
Council on the Arts, a State agency.



With special thanks to:              


FARM
AGRICULTURAL LIFE OF THE HUDSON VALLEY  | Photography by Brandt Bolding
Olana Coachman's House Gallery
Open daily June 18- October 30, 2011  | 10am-5pm 

In 1860, Frederic Church purchased approximately 126 acres of farmland and immediately set out to build a new “farm house” for his family. The artist expanded his land holdings over the next ten years and ultimately moved his family to the larger stone-and-brick house he built near the summit of the hill, but he continued to work on and operate a farm at Olana for the rest of his life. Church was proud of his farming accomplishments, writing friends and family of the success of his orchards, vegetables, and livestock.

The FARM exhibit coincides with extensive farm restoration work about to begin in Olana’s historic farm complex. The Olana Partnership and Olana State Historic Site have secured two major grants to focus on restoring Frederic Church’s farm. Over the next several years, meadow and orchard restoration projects will return the neglected farm to potentially active agricultural use. “According to a report of the American Farmland Trust, every hour we lose 125 acres of farm and ranch land in the U.S.,” reports Olana Partnership President Sara Griffen. “By focusing on the restoration of Olana’s farm we hope to play a small role in ensuring the agricultural future of Columbia County.”

Photographer Brandt Bolding states, “through extensive travels photographing and documenting the farms of northeastern America I am attempting to bring awareness of just a small part of what is at stake. Nowhere is this more of a concern than in the Mid-Hudson Valley…where citizens, and civic organizations large and small rally to preserve the irreplaceable beauty of our landscape from less than circumspect development.”

The photos included in the exhibition will be printed by the photographer in a limited edition of twelve and are available for purchase in the Olana Museum Store. The exhibit will be open every day through October 30, 2011 at Olana State Historic Site, 5720 State Route 9G, Hudson, New York.

About Brandt Bolding:
Brandt Bolding’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the northeastern part of the U.S. and have appeared in newspapers, journals, and publications by various preservation organizations in New York State. His work on agricultural life will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, NY, later this year. Two of his photographs appeared in the book entitled Old Homes of New England: Historic Houses in Clapboard, Shingle, and Stone published by Rizzoli in April 2010.

He was born in Texas in 1960, lived in a number of southern states, and in 1994 moved to New York City from Nashville, TN where he was a musician and educator. He became interested in historic preservation in the course of his architectural and interior design work, photographing and recording historical architectural details. This interest evolved into preservation and photographic documentation of the historic agricultural structures and farms in his home state of New York, specifically the Hudson, Mohawk, and Schoharie River valleys. He has traveled extensively in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine, photographing the farms, barns, and agricultural communities there as well. He is the son-in-law of the late Ted Croner, renowned New York photographer and protégé of Edward Steichen.

He holds a Certificate in Classical Architecture from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America. He has studied documentary camera with Bestor Cram, documentary post production with DanaRae Warren, and documentary development with Jack McDonald, all at Maine Media Workshop. He has also studied documentary research and development with Thom Powers at New York University.

PAST EXHIBITIONS

Fern Hunting Among These Picturesque Mountains: Frederic Edwin Church in Jamaica
June 5 - October 31, 2010
 
In 1865, Frederic Church, an avid traveler with a special passion for the tropics, journeyed to Jamaica. This was unlike his previous expeditions, as he and his wife, Isabel, were escaping from intense personal grief: the loss of their two young children. Throwing himself into the exploration and documentation of the island, the renowned artist produced a variety of works ranging from delicate pen sketches of palm trees to oil sketches of the atmospheric Blue Mountains and brilliant sunsets. The importance of the trip is reflected in the number of studies Church chose to mount, frame, and display at Olana, which became a major attraction for visitors to his home. The best of the related sketches and paintings from Jamaica comprise the exhibit.
See the Fern Hunting exhibition on Facebook »

In the Footsteps of Frederic Church: Photos by Larry Lederman
Olana Coachman's House
June 5 - October 31, 2010

Larry Lederman is a photographer and writer who has traveled to many of the locations Frederic Church visited. This exhibition displays photographs of a number of sites that Frederic Church painted and seek to evoke his artistic vision and explore his art. The photographs affirm that many of the wilderness enclaves Church painted still exist, preserved as part of our heritage because of the beauty that he and other nineteenth century painters captured. Autographed copies of the photos will be available for sale in the Olana museum store, and are also available online.

Glories of the Hudson: Frederic Edwin Church's Views From Olana
May 23 – October 12, 2009

The site is the result of a careful study of the river-banks, and commands so many views of varied beauty, that all the glories of the Hudson may be said to circle it.
– H. W. French, Art and Artists in Connecticut, 1879

In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name. This exhibition marked the Quadricentennial of his discovery by highlighting Frederic Church’s sketches of the prospect from his hilltop home overlooking the river.

Church made his first sketch of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains from Red Hill – the south end of the property that became Olana – in 1845, on a sketching expedition suggested by his teacher Thomas Cole. Returning to the Valley in 1860 as the nation’s most famous and best-paid artist, Church settled on a farm on the lower slope of the Sienghenbergh, securing for himself and his new wife a splendid vantage point for studying, sketching, and painting the river. Church continued to add land to his property, attaining new and varied vistas of the river. He crowned the estate with a Persian inspired house designed to frame splendid views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains.

Church never tired of his views of the river, documenting his passion for the Hudson in paintings, oil sketches, and drawings. From Olana, he observed the transformations wrought by the changing seasons, weather, and light, capturing chilly winter snows, brilliant sunsets, and passing storms in sketches executed with a few brush strokes or autumn colors and clear winter light in more finished easel paintings. Often Church was so pleased with the results that he mounted and framed sketches for display in his home. At other times they remained as personal references in the many portfolios of sketches the artist kept for his own private viewing and remembrance.

This inaugural exhibition of the Evelyn & Maurice Sharp Gallery featured a full-color, hardcover catalogue published by Cornell University Press and The Olana Partnership, with an essay by curator Evelyn Trebilcock and associate curator Valerie Balint, an introduction by Kenneth John Myers, Curator of American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and a forward by John K. Howat, Church scholar and former Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman of the Departments of American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Treasures From Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church
 
Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) was probably the most renowned American artist of the Civil War era. Trained by Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painters, and stimulated by the writings of the famed explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Church early demonstrated immense talent and global curiosity. He traveled extensively, and in his New York City studio painted monumental pictures of subjects in North and South America, the sub-Arctic, Europe, and the Near East. From the late 1850s to the 1870s, he displayed his most ambitious canvases as quasi-theatrical events, drawing thousands of people in America and Great Britain to his exhibitions, and marketing many of his works in fine engravings and lithographs.

Church amassed wealth sufficient to design and build a large estate, called Olana, in upstate New York for himself and his family, and his prominence was such that in 1870 he was both elected a founding trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and appointed to the Board of the New York City Parks Commission. Though his reputation subsequently faded, Church and his art enjoyed an enthusiastic revival in the second half of the twentieth century. His works now enhance the collections of museums throughout the United States and in Europe, and have been the subject of many exhibitions.

As striking in their way as any of Church's major paintings are his small oil studies and sketches, many executed wholly or partly in the field and several in the studio as designs for the major works. During his residence at Olana, Church framed many of those pictures, including a few large paintings, expressly for presentation in his home, and over a hundred others remain preserved there. Treasures from Olana represents a small selection of the finest of Church's sketches and studies from the house—most of them he is known to have displayed on its walls—as well as Olana's most important large painting, El Khasné, Petra. In 1875 he made El Khasné a gift to his wife, Isabel, and installed it over the fireplace in the Sitting Room.
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