The moon-its face, color, and power-threads through the tapestry of American landscape painting. The moon holds timeless allure for artists and is beloved by viewers of paintings everywhere. The Hudson River Museum has organized The Color of Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art-the first major museum examination of the moon in American visual arts from the 19th through the 20th century. The exhibition, accompanied by a catalog, appears at the Hudson River Museum and the James A. Michener Art Museum in 2019, and its timely presentation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission when, in 1969, American astronauts stepped onto the surface of the moon
The Color of the Moon reveals the longing romanticism for this celestial body in the shimmery silver moonscapes of 19th-century artists-Thomas Cole, Father of the Hudson River School, Jasper Cropsey, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Susie M. Barstow, George Inness, Edward Bannister, Ralph Blakelock, Winslow Homer, and Childe Hassam. Scientific inquiry stimulated the thirst for moonlight for the exhibition's 20th-century artists, among them-George Ault, Arthur Dove, Charles Burchfield, Edward Steichen, Oscar Bleumner, Agnes Pelton, Marguerite Zorach, Norman Rockwell, Joseph Cornell, and Jamie Wyeth, who explore abstractions of a full moon as the perfect orb, while tapping into its spiritual possibilities. Other artists show our race toward space, as we cling to our age-old attraction to the chill, distant moon always in our sky.
The Hudson River Museum, Fordham University Press, and the Michener Art Museum are joint publishers of the lavishly-illustrated, 200-page catalog, The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art. In engaging essays author Stella Paul maps the colors of the moon; catalog
co-editors Bartholomew Bland and Laura Vookles explore Hudson River School and Modernist moonscapes and their cultural resonance; and curators Melissa Martens Yaverbaum and Ted Barrow sight the moon's passage and allure in art of the Gilded and Space Ages.
The exhibition and catalog have been made possible by a generous grant by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc.
The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY | February 8 - May 12, 2019
James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA | June 1 - September 8, 2019
