New art New
After a successful four-year run, all but one of the artworks on loan from the Terra Foundation for American Art’s collection have left the Georgia Museum of Art’s galleries (the John Singleton Copley is staying a bit longer). The good news is that these departures created opportunities to reinterpret our existing installations with exciting new loans and rarely displayed works from our permanent collection. Eight portraits by John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925), on loan from a private collection, are now on view for the next year in the Nancy Cooper Turner Gallery. These works underscore the gallery’s emphasis on cultural exchange. Perhaps one of America’s most celebrated artists, Sargent defined Gilded Age portraiture. Born to American expatriates living in Italy, the artist moved to Paris in 1874 and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. From there, he traveled widely, including often between England and the U.S. In an increasingly connected global economy, Sargent produced works for the elite, capturing the likenesses of industrialists, aristocrats and artists across Europe and North America. The works on view highlight his cosmopolitan clientele and the cross-cultural, intellectual and artistic relationships that defined his career. In conversation with the existing installation, these works expand our understanding of the shifting cultural economy of the 19th century and the U.S. as an emerging center for this artistic exchange. In the adjoining Marilyn Overstreet Nalley South Gallery, additions from the museum’s collection of decorative and fine arts help reimagine the story of 20th-century American art history. After undergoing conservation, Francis Newton’s “Iceberg Lake” (1920) is on view for the first time since being acquired in 1970. The painting functions as a transition between stories Changes to Turner and Nalley South Galleries
the 19th-century landscapes in Turner and the modernist works on view in Nalley South. Although we tend to think of “modernism” as fundamentally urban, many modernist artists made use of elements from traditional and folk art. This new installation centers early-20th-century artists’ relationships to their environments and highlights the role of agriculture and urbanization in shifting cultural perceptions of time. In one corner of the gallery, three objects visualize this period in American history. Constructed from recycled materials, a clock made locally by Athens doctor William B. Conway in 1897 shares space with a cast- iron weathervane created around the same time. Both these works assess the natural world, one through time and one through wind (while recalling the rooster’s crow as a means of timekeeping). Together with Robert Henry Logan’s painting of a barn with a weathervane, they evoke the passage of time and a new, more technologically driven reality. Nearby is Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Red Barn, Lake George, New York” (1921), now joined by Guy Carleton Wiggins’ “Wall Street Winter” (ca. 1920). In combining these modernist works with more traditional vernacular pieces, this installation attempts to broaden understandings of early-20th-century American art. John Singer Sargent (American, 1856 – 1925), “Self portrait.” Pen and ink and washes on paper. Private collection, Columbus, Georgia.
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