THE SPEED ART MUSEUM TO SHOWCASE HIGHLIGHTS FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM COLLECTION
With the Princeton University Art Museum closed during new construction, the Speed Art Museum has been granted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase more than 100 works of American art from its collection. Before returning to its university enclave, the Speed will unveil Stories Retold: American Art from the Princeton University Art Museum on September 29.
The Speed is only one of three art museums showcasing this celebrated art exhibition, which will be on display through Jan 7, 2024. Spanning four centuries of Euro-American, African-American and Native American art, Stories
Retold features fresh art historical investigations and considers how contemporary perspectives can inform and enrich the meaning of an artwork
Museum collections slowly evolve over the decades to reflect shifting priorities and perspectives, and as a result, objects and artworks are considered and presented in everchanging ways. Stories Retold: American Art from the Princeton University Art Museum reveals many of the fascinating, challenging, and even controversial stories that have been told about these artworks over time – and offers us compelling new ways of seeing these works to reflect the times in which we now live.
Before the Speed, the exhibition was on display at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Ga., and the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Conn.
“The Speed is honored to serve as the third and final venue for Stories Retold: American Art from the Princeton University Art Museum. As the title suggests, the exhibition tells new stories about American art, and breaks scholarly ground by revealing previously hidden histories and considerations,” said Erika Holmquist-Wall, the museum’s Chief Curator and Mary and Barry Bingham, Sr Curator of European and American Painting & Sculpture “Our shared visual culture often reveals what has been valued in our collective past, and this exhibition takes a renewed look at many of those stories and topics that have resonated with artists and collectors over the centuries,” she said.
Organized by Karl Kusserow, the Princeton University Art Museum’s John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, the exhibition focuses on three areas of critical inquiry and topical relevance: race, gender and the environment. It arranges its works of art in 30 separate groups with an intention to introduce and encourage questions about America’s complex history and culture
“We’re glad to have this opportunity to bring some of Princeton’s most compelling American art to Louisville, presented in fresh ways that resonate with current issues and ideas It’s in keeping with the Speed’s impressive record of forward-thinking exhibitions and programs,” said Kusserow.
Stories Retold is both a relevant and timely presentation for Kentucky’s largest art museum, as the Speed is currently in the process of reinstalling all of its permanent collection galleries and updating the stories told about its own artworks “This exhibition is about expanding our ideas and notions about American art history,” said HolmquistWall. “And, it provides a helpful framework for opening up new perspectives on the art in the Speed’s collection.”
The exhibition is grounded in the understanding that the meanings of art objects change over time, in different contexts, and as a consequence of the way they are considered, even as collections evolve over time to accommodate shifting priorities and viewpoints. Drawn from several Princeton collections of historical American art, these
artworks are installed alongside contemporary art that imaginatively appropriate and reframe subjects, style, and content.
Stories Retold includes work by the enslaved potter David Drake, whose craft was a bold statement of resistance, and the artist Frederic Remington, who represented the “Wild West” in ways that stereotyped both white settlers and Native Americans, alongside recent works by contemporary artists such as Rande Cook, Renee Cox, and Titus Kaphar. One section will feature three iconic portraits of George Washington, including one by Rembrandt Peale that lionizes the first American president as a godlike celebrity, together with a photograph by Luke C. Dillon of the ruins of the slave quarters at Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, to remind us of the complexities of the man and his legacy.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog distributed by Princeton University Press.
Images:
Renee Cox, American b 1960, The Signing, 2017, Digital chromogenic print, 48" x 84 "
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926; born Allegheny City, PA; died Le Mesnil-Theribus, France), Little Girl in a Large Red Hat, ca 1881 Oil on canvas; 43.8 × 38.7 cm. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund (2021-12)
Pueblo, Historic, ca 1880, Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico, Rio Grande, United States, American southwest, Large two-hea ded, four-armed effigy figurine Ceramic with black and white slip; 63.5 x 39 x 21 cm. Lent by the Department of Geosciences, Princeton University (PU 7413) Photo Bruce M White Henry Inman (American, 1801–1846), O-Chee-Na-Shink-Ka a, 1832–33 Oil on canvas; 77 5 × 64 8 cm Promised gift from a Private Collection, member of the Class of 1982 John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815), Elkanah Watson, 1782 Oil on canvas; 149 × 121 cm Princeton University Art Museum Gift of the estate of Josephine Thomson Swann ( y1964-181)