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New York, New York: The
20th Century
February 13 - April 10, 2011
New York, New York:
The 20th Century invites visitors to explore and
celebrate the incomparable life, architecture and landscape of New York
City. New 
York, New
York, opening February 13, 2011, features over
50 paintings, photographs, sculptures and works on paper that capture New
York's unique metropolitan sphere and its inhabitants. The exhibition documents
this remarkable city, while complementing the Wichita Art Museum's own collection
of New York-based images. Both the exhibition and the Museum present important
examples of works by some of America's best known artists like Stuart Davis,
Edward Hopper and Guy Wiggins. In addition, the exhibition expands
the Museum's collection by including prints, photographs, and sculpture
by such artists as Oskar Kokoschka, Andreas Feininger, Rube Goldberg and
Berenice Abbott. (right: Andreas Feininger (American, born France,
1906-1999) Midtown Manhattan from Weehawken, New Jersey, 1942. Gelatin
silver print. Gift of Wysse Feininger in memory of her husband Andreas,
2000.56)
Originally consisting only of Manhattan Island, New York
City was re-chartered in 1898 to include the five present-day boroughs
of Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The imagery
in the exhibition New York, New York is centered on some of the most
notable and beloved features of the city which can be seen in each of the
five themes. "On the Waterfront" pairs the docks and shipping
industry, while "Avenues and Streets" transports the viewer to
the sidewalks of New York. Central Park, the most visited city park in America,
is prominently represented throughout "In the Park" and "On
the Town" features some of the seemingly endless possibilities for
entertainment in the city. Finally, "Tall Buildings" highlights
the very core of New York, the steel and stone of its buildings. New
York, New York, The 20th Century brings a taste of the vibrant life
of the big city, to the heartland of America.
As a tribute to the exhibition, the Museum will hold a
special presentation on Sunday, February, 27 at 2 pm in the Howard Wooden
Lecture Hall. The Museum will feature an actress interpreting the life of
the late, famed artist Louise Nevelson -- an enigmatic fixture in New York's
art world. The performance is free to the public, with paid admission, but
space is limited.
New York, New York! The 20th
Century was organized by the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach,
Florida.
Introductory wall text
- Founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam in 1624, New York
City was renamed by the English in honor of the Duke of York. It is the
largest city in the United States and a financial and cultural center.
Originally consisting only of Manhattan Island, it was re-chartered in
1898 to include the five present-day boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx,
Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
-
- New York, New York: The 20th Century invites you into the incomparable life, architecture and landscape
of New York City. Conceived as a counterpoint to George Segal: Street
Scenes -- an exhibition of 16 urban tableaux by one of the most important
and influential American artists of the 20th century -- this exhibition
features paintings, photographs, sculptures and works on paper that capture
New York's unique metropolitan sphere and the human interaction with it.
-
- The imagery presented here is centered on some
of the most notable and beloved features of the city which can be seen
in each of the five themes. "On the Waterfront" pairs the docks
and shipping industry with views of the Hudson. Central Park, the most
visited city park in America, is prominently represented throughout "In
the Park," with examples such as a bronze head of Alice by José
de Creeft from the famous Alice in Wonderland sculpture. "Avenues
and Streets" transports the viewer to the sidewalks of New York, from
Wall Street to Fifth Avenue. "On the Town" features the seemingly
endless possibilities for entertainment in the city, and "Tall Buildings"
highlights the very core of New York, the glass, steel and stone of its
buildings.
-
-
-
Object labels from the exhibition
- ON THE WATERFRONT
-
- Oskar Kokoschka (Austrian, 1886-1980)
- Manhattan (Statue of Liberty), 1967
- Lithograph on paper
- Gift of Mr. R. B. Kitaj through the Ackerman Foundation,
88.66.2
-
- Worldwide the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable
icons of the United States. From 1886 until the age of airplanes, it was
often the first glimpse of the US for millions of immigrants and returning
visitors traveling by ship from Europe. Officially titled Liberty Enlightening
the World, the gargantuan monument was presented by France to the American
people in 1886 as a centennial celebration of the signing of the Declaration
of Independence and as a representation of the friendship between the two
countries established during the American Revolution.
-
-
- Dorothy Norman (American, 1905-1997)
- New York Harbor, from the
portfolio "Intimate Visions," 1932
- Gelatin silver print
- Gift of Ian H. Zwicker, 99.163.10
-
- By about 1840, more passengers and cargo had come through
the port of New York than all other major harbors in the country combined,
and by 1900 it was one of the great international ports. Though the harbor
is famously occupied by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, neither
of those particular landmarks is seen in Dorothy Norman's photograph. Instead,
the image is a brief glimpse of the harbor that highlights the shipping
industry.
-
-
- Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966)
- New York Waterfront, 1908
- Halftone from a gum platinotype
- Gift of Baroness Jeane von Oppenheim, 98.135
-
-
- Ernest Lawson (American, 1873-1939)
- Hoboken Water Front, about
1930
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of R. H. Norton, 46.12
-
- Ernest Lawson remained committed to landscape painting
throughout his life. Making regular excursions from his home in New York
to the Hudson and Harlem Rivers and to Hoboken in New Jersey, Lawson's
riverscapes often represent the collision between rural and urban America.
In Hoboken Waterfront, he depicted the forces that connect the once
distinct and separate worlds. The busy tugboats, the hulking ship and the
distant factory smokestacks all contribute to the industrialization of
the natural world.
-
-
- Andreas Feininger (American, born France, 1906-1999)
- Midtown Manhattan from Weehawken, New Jersey, 1942
- Gelatin silver print
- Gift of Wysse Feininger in memory of her husband Andreas,
2000.56
-
-
- John Marin (American, 1870-1953)
- Docks at Weehawken, opposite New York, 1916
- Watercolor on paper
- Gift of Elsie and Marvin Dekelboum, 2005.49
-
- John Marin was celebrated during his lifetime as one
of America's most important artists. By 1911, one critic had called him
"the most brilliant of our younger water-colorists." Docks
at Weehawken is part of his "Weehawken Sequence" -- a series
that was painted on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. Some paintings
from the series, such as this one, look across to Manhattan while others
depict the nearby warehouses and woodlands.
-
-
- Reginald Marsh (American 1898-1954)
- City Harbor, 1939
- Watercolor on paper
- Bequest of Felicia Meyer Marsh, 79.10
-
-
- Andreas Feininger (American, born France, 1906-1999)
- Brooklyn Bridge, 1940s
- Gelatin silver print
- Gift of Wysse Feininger in memory of her husband Andreas,
2000.53
-
- The Brooklyn Bridge connects the New York City boroughs
of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Upon completion in 1883, it was the longest
suspension bridge in the world, the first steel-wire suspension bridge
and the first bridge to connect to Long Island. Shortly after immigrating
to New York in 1939, Andreas Feininger became a staff photographer
for Life Magazine, where he worked for 20 years. The 346
picture stories he published there helped to define him as one of the premier
photojournalists of the 20th century.
-
-
- George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
- Splinter Beach, 1916
- Lithograph on paper
- Gift of Mr. W. J. Enright, 55.4
-
- George Bellows was associated with the Ashcan School,
a group of American painters committed to conveying the character of the
new urban American experience through a nuanced realism. For Splinter
Beach, one of his earliest lithographs, Bellows created a complex image
presenting a rare moment of leisure in the lives of New York City's working
class. In various states of undress, they prepare for a swim on a stretch
of the Hudson River that was surely not meant for that purpose. Bellows
juxtaposes this teeming and timeless figurative spectacle against the contemporary
engine of burgeoning commerce as seen by a boat forging through choppy
waters. In the distance the new metropolis beckons: specifically the engineering
wonder of the Brooklyn Bridge and the new skyscrapers surrounding it.
-
-
-
- IN THE PARK
-
- Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935)
- A New York Blizzard, 1889
- Oil on cigar box top
- Gift of Elsie and Marvin Dekelboum, 2005.45
-
- After three years of studying and working in Paris, Childe
Hassam moved to New York in October 1889. From his home and studio at 95
Fifth Avenue, Hassam applied the lessons of French Impressionism that he
had learned in Paris to the bustling street life just outside his window
in midtown Manhattan. Drawn to the hansom cabs that awaited passengers
at Madison Square, Hassam became well known for his almost scientific documentation
of New York's carriage drivers. During the winter of 1889-1890, he painted
them repeatedly -- as they waited in the cold, as they drove over snowy
streets, and in New York Blizzard, as they raced through inclement
weather.
-
-
- George Bellows (American, 1882-1925)
- Winter Afternoon (Riverside Park, New York City), 1909
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of R. H. Norton, 49.1
-
- George Bellows was greatly attracted to depicting snow
and wrote in 1913, "I must always paint the snow at least once a year."
He felt challenged by portraying the colors of snow -- the reflected greens,
blues and reds enabled him to experiment with his palette. In Winter
Afternoon, he painted the expressive potential of drifted snow, huddled
figures, a frozen river and a bleak winter sky, but he also examined the
tenuously negotiated border between urban and rural America. Painting in
Riverside Park on the west side of Manhattan, Bellows gazed across the
Hudson River to the then almost bucolic palisades of New Jersey. At the
time he painted this work, Riverside Park was being developed for the Hudson-Fulton
Celebration Parade and spectacular Naval displays. Thousands were expected
to attend these celebrations marking the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson's
discovery of the Delaware Bay and Hudson River.
-
-
- George Luks (American, 1866-1933)
- The Cabby, not dated
- Oil on paper
- Bequest of R. H. Norton, 53.113
-
-
- Jerome Myers (American, 1867-1940)
- Concert in Central Park, New York, 1919
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of Elsie and Marvin Dekelboum, 2005.61
-
- Jerome Myers was born in rural Virginia just two years
after the end of the Civil War. The hardship he faced as an orphan of the
South during Reconstruction informed his sympathetic portrayal of New York
City's working class. Although sensitive to the plight of the immigrant
poor, Myers was never a social crusader and rarely depicted the squalor
of urban decay. He admired the resolve and the character of the poor, and
favored scenes of social interaction and moments of relative ease. For
Concert in Central Park, Myers captured a more prosperous leisure
class than he typically portrayed. The well-dressed little girls in the
foreground, the many fashionable hats and the open parasols suggest that
for this painting, Myers migrated north from his usual haunt at Seward
Park to the south end of Central Park where the cast iron bandstand once
stood just below East 72nd Street.
-
-
- Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
- Boy with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York
City, 1963
- Gelatin silver print (printed in reverse)
- Gift of Mr. John Raimondi, 88.18
-
- Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Manhattan, Diane Arbus
began producing advertising photographs for Russek's, her father's Fifth
Avenue department store, together with her husband in the late 1940s. Once
she began studying with Richard Avedon and Lisette Model at the New School
in New York in 1957, she began shooting "from the gut" and quickly
discovered the subject matter with which she has become synonymous: individuals
who failed to fit neatly into acceptable social strata. This boy's face
could be described as maniacal. However, Arbus captured his expression
by having the boy stand there while she kept moving around him, claiming
she tried to find the right angle. After a while, the boy became impatient
with her and told her to "take the picture already!" creating
the expression that seems to convey that the boy has violence in mind,
while gripping the grenade tightly in his hand.
-
-
- F. Usher DeVoll (American, 1873-1941)
- Springtime in Washington Square, after 1927
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of Chaplain Joshua L. Goldberg, USN, ret. in honor
of his birthday, 84.5
-
- Washington Square Park is a Greenwich Village landmark.
In 1889 to celebrate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration
as president of the United States, a large plaster and wood Memorial Arch
was erected over Fifth Avenue just north of the park. The popularity of
this arch was so great that in 1892 a permanent marble arch was designed
by New York architect Stanford White and erected in the park. While DeVoll
made Rhode Island his home, he is best known for his paintings of New York
City's streets and harbors. He traveled frequently to the city, walking
along its streets and riding the Staten Island Ferry to capture it from
the perspective of its every day inhabitants.
-
-
- José de Creeft (American, born Spain, 1884-1982)
- Alice (Head of Alice in Wonderland), about 1960
- Bronze
- Gift of George T. Delacorte, 83.17
-
- To honor his wife Margarita, philanthropist George T.
Delacorte commissioned a sculpture from José de Creeft in 1959.
Considered one of Central Park's most beloved sculptures, it is a depiction
in bronze of a group of characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
While the figure of the Mad Hatter is rumored to be a caricature of George
Delacorte himself, the face of Alice resembles the sculptor's daughter,
Donna. De Creeft was a major contributor to the development of modernist
sculptural techniques; his bust of Valerie Delacorte, George Delacorte's
second wife, can be seen on the third floor of the Nessel Wing.
-
-
- Bulgari (Fernando Toxidor, design; Andrea Spadini, sculptor;
Raoul de Vecchio, casting and gilding; Rouge & Cie., movement and music)
- A Musical Clock, based on the Central Park Musical
Carrousel Clock (dedicated 1965)
- Gilt bronze, lapis lazuli, and semi-precious stones
- Gift of Valerie Delacorte in memory of George T. Delacorte,
Publisher and Philanthropist, R2006.5
-
- This is a "table-top" version of the famous
Delacorte Clock situated above the arcade between the Wildlife Center and
the Children's Zoo in Central Park; it was commissioned by George T. Delacorte
as a gift to his wife, Valerie. The animals on the two clocks as well as
their movements and actions are identical, but while the musical repertoire
of the monumental clock comprises children's songs such as "Mary Had
a Little Lamb," the music-box clock -- still in perfect working order
-- plays "On the Street Where You Live." This is, perhaps, the
signature melody from Lerner and Loewe's musical My Fair Lady, which
had its debut on Broadway in early 1956 and made Julie Andrews a star in
the role of Eliza Doolittle. It ran for an unprecedented 2,717 performances.
-
-
- Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao (Taiwanese, born 1977)
- Grand Concourse, 2008
- Pigment ink print, ed. 2/12
- Purchase, with funds generously provided by J. Ira and
Nicki Harris, 2009.??
-
- In 2008 the Bronx Museum of the Arts commissioned Jeff
Chien-Hsing Liao to wander throughout the streets, parks and alleys surrounding
the Grand Concourse to create a photographic portrait of the Bronx as it
is today, resulting in a series of 12 monumental images showing the borough
as vital, teeming and ever changing. The commission also commemorates the
centennial of the Grand Concourse. Conceived in 1890 as a way of connecting
Manhattan to the northern Bronx, the Grand Concourse was designed by Louis
Aloys Risse, an Alsatian-born engineer, and opened in November 1909.
-
-
-
- AVENUES AND STREETS
-
- Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935)
- Melting Snow, 1905
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of Elsie and Marvin Dekelboum, 2005.63
-
- New York is the most beautiful city in the world.
There is no boulevard in all Paris that compares to our own Fifth Avenue.
- Childe Hassam, 1913
-
- Although Childe Hassam was a native of Boston and traveled
frequently to Paris, it was New York that truly captured his imagination.
For him, New York was a moment in time as well as a place, and that moment
had been the 1890s, the decade in which he had come to know and love the
city. By the time that Hassam painted Melting Snow in 1905 New York
was changing dramatically. Motorbuses were replacing horse-drawn trolleys
on Fifth Avenue, subway lines and elevated trains rumbled below ground
and overhead, and Hassam's beloved handsome cabs were quickly disappearing
from the city's streets. But in Melting Snow, New York's Fifth Avenue
remained much as it had once been. A graceful woman pauses to look into
a shop window, horse-drawn cabs trundle up and down the snowy street, and
despite the cold, Hassam is down at street level recording it all.
-
-
- James VanDerZee (American, 1886-1983)
- The Guarantee Photo Studio, "One of my First
Photo Studios", 1915
- Gelatin silver print
- Purchase, U. S. Trust Foundation Fund for Photography,
99.83
-
- James VanDerZee opened his photography studio, called
the Guarantee Photo Studio, on 125th Street in New York City's Harlem neighborhood.
From the time he opened his first commercial studio to the 1950s, he produced
hundreds of photographs recording Harlem's growing middle class. He knew
the neighborhood and its inhabitants and shared their dreams and aspirations
for self-determination and racial pride. His images documented the Harlem
Renaissance as it was created and sustained by a healthy, talented, prosperous
and productive community.
-
-
- John Grabach (American, 1886-1981)
- Sidewalks of New York, about
1920s
- Oil on canvas
- Bequest of R. H. Norton, 53.71
-
- In the 1920s John Grabach painted a number of urban scenes
that were distinctly American in subject matter and modern in approach
with buildings, figures and train tracks creating an almost decorative
pattern of shapes. He found inspiration in the spirit of the people "living
and doing, going about their affairs" on the exciting streets of New
York City. Sidewalks of New York teems with life and activity, transforming
the lower east side into a swirling tapestry of line and color. The painting's
urban subject matter places it in line with a tradition begun over a decade
earlier by the Ashcan School-a group of artists known for their unflinching
depictions of life in New York.
-
-
- Augusta Savage (American, 1892-1962)
- Gamin, about 1929
- Painted plaster cast
- Purchase, R.H. Norton Trust, 2004.26
-
- Augusta Savage's Gamin (French for street urchin)
is an icon of the Harlem Renaissance. It eloquently captures the mix of
pride, inquisitiveness and self-sufficiency that characterized many youths
struggling for survival on the streets of New York in the 1920s and 1930s.
Savage spent most of her professional career in New York, where she was
a prominent figure in the cultural revolution known as the Harlem Renaissance.
She opened the Savage School of Arts and Crafts in 1932, went on to serve
as Director of the Harlem Community Arts Center in the following years
and was a tireless advocate for artists during the Works Progress Administration.
-
-
- John Marin (American, 1870-1953)
- New York City Abstraction with Figures, 1934
- Oil on canvas board
- Gift of Elsie and Marvin Dekelboum, 2005.54
-
- New York's impressive modern architecture had fascinated
John Marin since his childhood days spent gazing across the Hudson River
from Weehawken, New Jersey. Years later, Marin first gained prominence
in America for his prints, drawings and paintings that documented the rise
of Manhattan's new Woolworth Building in 1913. He viewed the city in abstract
terms, seeing it more as a formal arrangement or an oversized assemblage.
In the early 1930s, Marin began a series of paintings that not only recorded
the city from a less removed vantage point than was typical of the artist,
but from within the very heart of the bustle. These works, like New
York City Abstraction with Figures, launched a new interest in the
human figure situated in the cityscape.
-
-
- Guy Wiggins (American, 1883-1962)
- New York Snow Scene, 1942
- Oil on fiberboard
- Gift of Jane Peterson, 42.110
-
-
- Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967)
- August in the City, 1945
- Oil on canvas
- Bequest of R. H. Norton, 53.84
-
- August in the City is, simply
put, the personification of beautiful solitude. It is a scene without people,
yet makes you feel like you are watching a narrative unfold. Traditionally
during the month of August, many New Yorkers abandon the city for vacation
destinations, and this painting of an apartment across the street from
Riverside Park and its lonely sculpture in the window may speak to nothing
more than the relative emptiness of the city in the late summer. But, 1945
also marked the end of World War II and the return of countless American
soldiers. Anxious women poised before windows, awaiting husbands, sons
and brothers was not an unfamiliar site in New York or anywhere in the
US.
-
-
- Mark Tobey (American, 1890-1976)
- The Avenue, 1954
- Tempera on fiberboard
- Purchased through the R. H. Norton Fund, 59.16
-
- Mark Tobey sought to paint "the frenetic rhythms
of the modern city, the interweaving of lights and the streams of people
who are entangled in the meshes of this net." He accomplishes this
in The Avenue through the constantly moving line that creates animation,
vitality and rhythm. The painting is part of a larger series called the
"White Writing" paintings -- where Tobey drew light or white
lines against a darker background, loosely depicting and celebrating the
liveliness and bright white lights of Broadway.
-
-
- Rube Goldberg (American, 1883-1970)
- The Commuter, not dated
- Bronze
- Gift of Dale and Doug Anderson, 96.13
-
-
- Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
- Wall Street, New York, 1915,
printed 1976-77
- Platinum palladium print, ed. 75/100
- Gift of Michael Hoffman in honor of Annette and Jack
Friedland for their generous support and commitment to the highest level
of photography and photographers, 92.8
-
-
- Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1992)
- Statuary Shop, Water Street, New York City, 1930
- Gelatin silver print
- Purchase, R. H. Norton Trust, 2004.7
-
- Berenice Abbott moved to Paris in 1921, planning to become
a sculptor. Instead, she worked as a photographic assistant to Man Ray
and by 1925 set up her own portrait studio. She greatly admired the work
of Eugène Atget, who used an encyclopedic approach to document Old
Paris and its environs. When Abbott returned to New York in 1929, she embarked
upon a similar project photographing the rapidly changing face of New York
City in a systematic, precise and detailed fashion. Attentive to both the
smallest details and the largest architectural configurations, she found
an inexhaustible subject in the urban landscape. Some of Abbott's most
memorable images portray individual storefronts, as in this photograph
of a shop for religious statuary in lower Manhattan, which conveys a slightly
surreal mood.
-
-
- Bill Witt (American, born 1921)
- The Greeting at $2.00 Shoes, Lower East Side, New
York City, 1947
- Gelatin silver print
- Gift of Gary W. Witt, 2002.173
-
- Weegee (Arthur Fellig), (American, born Poland, 1899-1968)
- Arrested for Vagrancy, 1940
- Gelatin silver print
- Gift of The Carol and Raymond Merritt Collection, 2005.71
-
- As legend would have it, Arthur Fellig's nickname is
a phonetic rendering of Ouija as his apparent sixth sense for crime often
led him to a crime scene well ahead of the police. Observers likened this
sense, actually derived from tuning his radio to the police frequency,
to the Ouija board, the popular fortune-telling game. Though not an image
of a particularly dramatic crime, Arrested for Vagrancy is a humorous
nod to the broad vagrancy laws of New York City that were in place until
the 1960s; here, a police officer has apprehended a homeless dog.
-
-
- Andreas Feininger (American, born France, 1906-1999)
- Elevated Trestle, Division Street, 1941, printed 1987
- Gelatin silver print
- Gift of Raymond W. Merritt, The Raymond & Carol Merritt
Collection, 2003.92
-
- New York City's first regular elevated railway service
began on February 14, 1870; the El originally ran along Greenwich Street
and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. Feininger shot this photograph at the intersection
of the Second and Third Avenue Els at Division Street and the Bowery. The
image highlights the spider web shadows of the expansive intersection from
the train tracks overhead. A year after this photograph was taken the Second
Avenue El was dismantled, followed by the Third Avenue El in 1955.
-
-
- Andreas Feininger (American, born France, 1906-1999)