Olana State Historic Site
May 12 – October 27, 2024
Exhibition organized by The Olana Partnership
Overview
Since 2020, global events, including COVID-19, have brought many of us face-to-face with the realities of death on the largest scale in our lifetimes. In a time of grief, reflection, and hope, Afterglow looks at how Frederic Church and his family grieved and found peace after loss in their own time. At the heart of this exhibition are Frederic Church’s rarely seen memorial landscape paintings. While Church is best known for his monumental, panoramic paintings of natural wonders, he also created smaller, intimate works full of personal symbolism for a primary audience of friends and family. Church painted these memorial landscapes throughout his career, and they are key documents of nineteenth-century America’s search for spirituality in nature. As he experienced personal losses, Church expressed grief through his paintings and immersed himself in the natural world to heal. At Olana, Church’s family home and designed landscape, the historic house interacts with the landscape and framed views of the natural world, a powerful source of solace and inspiration. As you explore Olana, we invite you to reflect on the healing power of landscapes in your own life.
Selected Works
Frederic Edwin Church, To the Memory of Cole, 1848. Oil on canvas, 31 3/4 x 47 5/8 in. Collection of Christopher Larson
Frederic Edwin Church, The Evening Star, 1858. Oil on canvas, 7 ¾ x 10 ½ in. Collection of Marshall Field. Photograph by James Prinz Photography, Chicago.
Olana as a Landscape of Memory
In creating Olana around the views, which Frederic Church also painted, the views from Olana remain today as a memorial to Church’s world. That’s why we protect them. Olana is now Church’s ultimate memorial painting.
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Credits
The Olana Partnership is very grateful to the generous lenders and funders who have made it possible to bring together the majority of Church’s memorial landscapes at Olana, including the Asbjorn Lunde Foundation and the Felicia Fund. We are particularly appreciative of the Asbjorn Lunde Foundation’s funding of the corresponding publication, which continues Mr. Lunde’s legacy of support for Olana, including serving as a trustee of The Olana Partnership.
The Olana Partnership is the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit cooperative partner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation at Olana State Historic Site. This exhibition has been made possible by support from private donors to The Olana Partnership and the in-kind contributions of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and New York State Bureau of Historic Sites. The exhibition design was developed by César Zapata.
General support for The Olana Partnership’s programs is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.