Wild Nature: Masterworks from the Adirondack Museum

Located in Wood Gallery, 62 stunning masterworks reveals how images of the Adirondack landscape shaped America's perception of the wilderness and how, in turn, created wilderness as a national icon. Works include paintings and rarely-exhibited photographs and prints dating from the 19th to the early 21st century.

From the region's sublime grandeur and picturesque beauty, to scenes of settlement and camp life, the Adirondacks represented the promise of health, spiritual renewal, and recreation for scores of painters who flocked to the region, in addition to vacationers and sportsmen. In the twentieth century, artists working in the Adirondacks parted from the conventions of their nineteenth-century predecessors, as will be evident in featured works by Harold Weston, John Marin, Rockwell Kent, Amy Jones, Jonas Lie, Dorothy Dehner, and David Smith. While themes of wilderness persist in the modern age, the artists' approach, whether abstract or realist, reflects changing attitudes toward the natural environment combined with their own personal expression. 

The exhibition will also highlight a selection of large-format albumen prints by Seneca Ray Stoddard who, more than any other photographer, shaped the popular image of the Adirondacks, as well as prints by the famed publishers Currier and Ives, among others.

The Adirondack Museum is located in Blue Mountain Lake, New York, in the center of the Adirondack Park, the largest state park in the contiguous United States. The exhibition is organized by the Adirondack Museum with The Hyde Collection. It is curated by Erin B. Coe, guest curator for The Hyde Collection, in association with Caroline Welsh, senior art historian and director emerita, and Laura Rice, chief curator of the Adirondack Museum.