Take a behind-the-scenes look at the Delaware Art Museum’s fall special exhibition, Transcendent: Landscapes of the Hudson River School. Drawn primarily from the rich collections of The New York Historical and supplemented with key loans from public and private collections, the show introduces visitors to the tradition of landscape painting that flourished in the United States in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Transcendent explores these nationally beloved paintings through the lens of Transcendentalism, a 19th-century movement that emphasized the spiritual connection between humans and the natural world. The exhibition also examines the belief of period artists, writers, and theologians who viewed nature to be the primary locus of the divine. Though they do not overtly illustrate religious scenes or texts, Hudson River School paintings were created by deeply religious artists who understood their works to reflect their faith.
The talk will be presented by Joe Soler, Ph.D., who serves as DelArt’s Gallery Learning Assistant. He received his master’s degree and doctorate in Urban Education from Temple University. Prior to DelArt, he held a number of positions at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and is an adjunct professor at two colleges.
Image: South American Landscape, 1873. Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Oil on canvas, 31 x 48 1/2 inches. Delaware Art Museum, Gift of the Friends of Art, 1964.
