Foreword

Brownlee, Peter John; Piccoli, Valéria; Uhlyarik, Georgiana

Save Cite Share

Free

Foreword

Peter John Brownlee (Editor), Valéria Piccoli (Editor), Georgiana Uhlyarik (Editor)

Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic

~For millennia, people in the Americas have expressed their relationships to the land through art. In the early years of the nineteenth century, when North and South America were being traversed and colonized, and when new nations were being formed, landscape paintings began to convey magnificent visions of key sites across the hemisphere. In the...

Author

Peter John Brownlee (Editor), Valéria Piccoli (Editor), Georgiana Uhlyarik (Editor)

PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21837

Foreword

For millennia, people in the Americas have expressed their relationships to the land through art. In the early years of the nineteenth century, when North and South America were being traversed and colonized, and when new nations were being formed, landscape paintings began to convey magnificent visions of key sites across the hemisphere. In the century that followed, the art of the Americas continued to reflect and engage with the complex political, scientific and spiritual issues at play in the conception and representation of land itself. Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic brings these visual histories together, encouraging us to ask important questions about how we belong to, shape and are shaped by the environments we inhabit.

We believe that Picturing the Americas will have enduring significance. Driven by a desire to explore pan-American understandings of landscape, participants across two continents have come together to allow individuals throughout the hemisphere to encounter many masterpieces for the first time, and to see familiar works anew.

This multi-year endeavor began when Ivo Mesquita, the former Artistic Director of Brazil’s Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, recognized the need for—and potential impact of—a uniquely pan-American project. In 2010, he, along with his predecessor, Marcelo Araujo, shared his idea with the Terra Foundation for American Art, a Chicago-based organization that fosters international dialogue on the historical art of the United States of America. The two institutions agreed to partner in the development of an exhibition that would investigate the landscape-painting traditions of the Americas. To make the project truly hemispheric in scope, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and the Terra Foundation then reached out to a third institutional partner in Canada: the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

Over the next five years, three curators—Peter John (PJ) Brownlee, of the Terra Foundation; Valéria Piccoli, of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; and Georgiana Uhlyarik, of the AGO—worked together to bring this pan-American project to life. Their vision for the exhibition began to coalesce: Picturing the Americas would unite iconic nineteenth- and twentieth-century works from collections across the hemisphere. As the project progressed, it welcomed a new partner: the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the exhibition’s venue in the United States.

The resulting exhibition, which features more than 110 works and will appear in three venues, is a powerful exploration of the relationship between art, place and identity. Picturing the Americas underlines how we are connected by a shared pan-American history while simultaneously highlighting the particularities of our respective cultural traditions. The exhibition positions individual works of art within a broader hemispheric context to reveal the role landscape painting has played in the formation of nations and the evolution of attitudes toward the land. For visitors to the exhibition, these exceptional paintings will serve as windows, revealing the connections, continuities and differences between expressions of place from artists across the Americas.

The exhibition and this publication both tell a narrative that complements our understanding of the links between works and the contexts in which they were created. This book was conceived in tandem with the exhibition, and is also the product of a collaboration: over the past three years, the curators have convened summits and facilitated dialogue on the landscape art of the Americas with scholars from across the hemisphere. The result of those discussions is the first multi-author publication to offer a comprehensive pan-American perspective on landscape painting in the period of its greatest cultural prominence. The voices represented here collectively provide a new way to think about the land and its evolving artistic representation.

Picturing the Americas is a partnership between its three curators, PJ, Valéria and Georgiana, who also edited this volume. Their vision, collaboration and leadership have been inspirational. They began the project as representatives of their respective nations but have emerged as citizens of the hemisphere. For their passionate energy and dedication, we offer our congratulations. We are also deeply grateful to the many institutions and individuals who loaned works to the show; their spirit of openness has allowed us to bring this idea to life, and they are acknowledged in full on pages 10–11. We thank, too, the members of the advisory committee who guided the development of this exhibition and its publication, who are acknowledged on page 278, as well as the book’s contributors, whose texts raise important questions and point us in sustaining directions.

This exhibition and publication are designed to serve as springboards, propositions that incite inquiry into our ever-evolving relationships with art, land and place. We hope that Picturing the Americas casts powerful landscape paintings in a new light, pushing us to see how these works of art are embedded and implicated in broader social and political realities. We hope that Picturing the Americas leads to the development of further pan-American projects and collaborations. Ultimately, we hope that Picturing the Americas is the beginning of a truly hemispheric conversation.

Elizabeth Glassman
President and CEO, Terra Foundation for American Art

Ivo Mesquita
Former Artistic Director, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo

Matthew Teitelbaum
Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO, Art Gallery of Ontario

The Terra Foundation for American Art is proud to be a co-organizer and sponsor of Picturing the Americas, an extraordinarily rich exchange of art and ideas resulting from a dynamic partnership with the AGO and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. It is rare when the strategic goals of three very different institutions align as closely as they have in this project: from the very first planning meetings, we lent our respective voices and vision to a conversation that deliberately and respectfully expands notions of so-called American art to more fully embrace the arts of many nations across two continents.

Robust cross-cultural dialogue resides at the heart of the Terra Foundation’s mission: to foster the exploration, understanding and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States for national and international audiences. We advance this mission by collaborating on innovative exhibitions such as this one, as well as by supporting original research and educational programs. Implicit in these activities is the belief that art has the potential both to distinguish cultures and to unite them—a conviction manifest in Picturing the Americas.

Most of all, we value the important institutional partnerships that deliver exhibitions such as this. The energy of this collaboration reflects the inspired leadership of the directors of our partner museums: Matthew Teitelbaum and Ivo Mesquita.

Additionally, this project has been one of vigorous exchange between curators, educators, registrars and other staff I want to extend my deep appreciation to my colleagues at the Terra Foundation as well as at all of the partner institutions for their steadfast commitment to international discourse, and for their hard work in bringing this exhibition to fruition. I would also like to thank the Terra Foundation’s Board of Directors for its enthusiastic and affirmative support of this project.

Elizabeth Glassman

The Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo is proud to have been involved in this project from the beginning, as it represents a milestone in the history and the contemporary program of our institution. As a Brazilian museum, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo explores the country’s art history as a national narrative and as a base for local cultural identity, but also strives to engage in dialogue with other traditions, particularly those within the American hemisphere. Picturing the Americas thus represents a unique achievement: a long-awaited exhibition with a pan-American framework that integrates the many perceptions, perspectives and expressions that constitute North and South America. The project brings together more than 100 years of diverse local imaginaries and artistic practices, and closely examines the very notions of aesthetics, identity and belonging. Picturing the Americas is the result of a deep commitment on the part of the institutions involved to produce scholarly yet accessible knowledge in order to cultivate a better understanding of a pan-American art and culture.

It has been an honor and a pleasure for the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo to share in this enriching and rewarding project with the AGO and the Terra Foundation for American Art, whose generosity made this exhibition and publication possible. My thanks to these institutions’ directors, Matthew Teitelbaum and Elizabeth Glassman, for their commitment and vision. We hope this partnership will foster future dialogue across the hemisphere, which remains our territory in a globalized and interdependent world. An exhibition like this is only possible thanks to the collaboration, support and work of an extensive group of institutions, lenders, experts and sponsors from across the Americas—my gratitude to all of them. I also thank the curatorial team and their advisors for building this poetic and brilliant landscape, already a remarkable visual experience of our time.

Ivo Mesquita

It has been an honor for the Art Gallery of Ontario to participate in this project, which allows the gallery to embed celebrated Canadian works in a hemispheric context. For both Canadian and international audiences, Picturing the Americas is an exciting opportunity to examine Canadian landscapes with fresh eyes, and the AGO is energized by the insights this project has produced—and will continue to foster in the future.

The AGO is deeply grateful to our colleagues at the Terra Foundation and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, who believed in Picturing the Americas from the beginning and saw it through to its opening. We thank these institutions for involving us in this important project, and for being truly thoughtful and thought-provoking partners throughout; special thanks to directors Elizabeth Glassman and Ivo Mesquita for their leadership. The AGO also thanks the internal project team that brought the exhibition to life in Toronto, as well as the publication team that produced this exceptional volume.

Picturing the Americas would not have been possible without the involvement of our sponsors. My thanks to our Lead Sponsor, Yamana Gold Inc., as well as Yamana Gold Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Peter Marrone, and his wife, Jane, for their remarkable leadership. I also thank the Terra Foundation for American Art for its generous support. Both organizations were early and enthusiastic supporters of the project, and their dedication is truly appreciated. I am also pleased to acknowledge our Government Partner, the Government of Ontario. Picturing the Americas is the result of deep commitment and a great deal of hard work on the part of many individuals across the Americas, and I thank and congratulate everyone who made this project a reality.

Matthew Teitelbaum

Previous chapter Next chapter

Base text size -

Chapter images ()