Over the course of her career impressionist painter Mary Cassatt created over 200 graphic works, the majority of which were not printed for general sale. Her most important graphic art is a set of twelve drypoints that she created in 1889 and 1890, and printed in an edition of 25 impressions. Distinguished by their free flowing line, compositional economy, and emphasis on contour, the set is evenly divided between studies of young women and the theme of mother and child. This outstanding group of prints was given to the Academy in 1903 by the artist, printmaker and decorator Samuel Colman, who became closely aware of Cassatt’s work through his association with her great patrons Louisine and Henry Osborne Havemeyer.

Realist painter Colleen Browning’s work is largely recognized for its command of material and media and for her unwavering devotion to depicting the human condition. Colleen Browning: Urban Dweller, Exotic Traveler highlights Browning’s provocative sense of design, underlying abstract compositional structure, bold application of texture and pattern, and personal and dramatic renderings of light and atmosphere. Featuring twenty works, the exhibition uncovers Browning’s subject matter: New York City and sites in the developing world where Browning visited and worked, including Grenada, South America, and North Africa.

In the late 1960s, artist and activist May Stevens undertook a large series of works that were not only protests against the Vietnam War, but also commentaries on the state of civil rights and the white, male-dominated authoritarian power structures in the country. This installation features the Academy’s paintings by Stevens including Benny Andrews, the Artist and Big Daddy Paper Doll, one of the central paintings from the series.

The twenty works in Women Sculptors of the National Academy reflect the evolution of American sculpture between the late 19th and 20th centuries and celebrate the special achievements and contributions of women artists to the medium. The works vary in subject from classical allegory in Evelyn Beatrice Longman’s Victory to Nancy Grossman’s politically charged Gunhead, and from the ethnic references of Elizabeth Catlett’s Fluted Head to the sexually infused work of Louise Bourgeois’ Untitled (Germinal).

This show presents approximately thirty gifts covering forty years of artistic production in painting and printmaking. The installation illustrates several artistic strategies and approaches. Included are Sarai Sherman’s color etchings of popular musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin; Howardena Pindell’s Autobiography: Hiroshima Disguised (in 10 parts), Emma Amos’ Giza and Faith, Polly Appelbaum’s The Fandancer, Frances Barth’s Violet, Julie Heffernan’s Millenium Burial Mound, Jacqueline Gourevitch’s Night:WTC Looking East, and recent work by Nancy Friese, Karen Kunc, Ellen Lanyon, Carole Robb, Diana Horowitz, and others.

This dramatic exhibition explores the infinite properties of the color white presented in various ways and different media. Works by Stephen Antonakos, Valerie Jaudon, Robert Mangold, Dorothea Rockburne, and Robert Ryman, all recently elected Academicians, are on view.

An American Collection – Second Rotation

May 23, 2012 – January 13, 2013

Masterpieces and notable works from the Academy’s collections, featuring a salon-style installation of 120 paintings, spanning the period of 1820-1970 and reflecting the diversity of American art and the Academy’s membership

Best known as a ground-breaking composer and performer, John Cage was also a visual artist who created an extensive but little-known body of watercolors and prints over the last twenty years of his life. Opening at the National Academy Museum during the centennial year of Cage’s birth, The Sight of Silence: John Cage’s Watercolors and Works on Paper will focus on a compelling group of watercolors Cage created while visiting the Mountain Lake Workshop, Virginia, in 1988 and 1990. Cage’s visual art will be presented within the context of his transdisciplinary practice that included experimental music, a strong interest in Zen and Eastern philosophies, and performance, providing an entrée into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most creative thinkers.

Featuring works by over 100 artists and architects, the Annual reveals the cross-generational dialogue occurring in the art world by juxtaposing contemporary masters with emerging and mid-career artists, showcasing Academicians and invited artists and architects. Featured artists include Ellen Altfest, Karl Benjamin, David Diao, Lesley Dill, Kate Gilmore, Joan Jonas, Roberto Juarez, Glenn Ligon, Malcolm Morley, Alison Saar, Arlene Shechet, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Carrie Mae Weems, Stephen Westfall, among many others. Architectural projects will include work by Jeanne Gang, Peter Gluck, Cesar Pelli, Thomas Phifer, Robert A. M. Stern, Bernard Tschumi, and Billie Tsien, and others.

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In the first New York retrospective of the artist’s work, Will Barnet at 100 explores the dialogue between figuration and abstraction that has defined Barnet’s remarkable 80-year career. A painter, printmaker and teacher who has worked largely outside the various schools of Modernism, Barnet has made significant and unique contributions to American art in the realms of both abstraction and figuration. Will Barnet at 100 features approximately 45 works from private and museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Montclair Art Museum, and the Neuberger Museum of Art.

A salon-style installation of approximately 120 paintings from the museum’s collection, An American Collection spans the period 1820-1970 and reflects the diversity of American art and the Academy’s membership. The installation features portraits, landscapes, figure, and genre paintings covering a broad range of styles from the Romantic era of the 1820s through the re-emergence of Realism in the 1960s. Selections will include works by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, William Merritt Chase, Frank Duveneck, Henry Ossawa Tanner, John Steuart Curry, Isabel Bishop, Charles Wilbert White, and Richard Estes.

Highlights from the National Academy’s extensive collection of artist portraits from the early 19th century to today are on view. Most of the more than 1,000 artists’ portraits in the collection were submitted by artist members as a condition of their membership. Taken as a whole, the works in the collection constitute one of the largest and most important holdings of portraits in the country. Included among the works on exhibition are self-portraits by Asher B. Durand, John Singer Sargent, Cecilia Beaux, Thomas Eakins, Jacob Lawrence, Wayne Thiebaud, Chuck Close, and Susanna Coffey.

Parabolas to Post-Modern: Architecture from the Collection is a brief survey of post-war architecture by National Academicians (NAs) and reflects the immense growth and changes in American architecture over the last seventy years. The installation draws on the Academy’s extensive but rarely seen architectural holdings and includes drawings, photographs, renderings, and models by modern and contemporary architects, including Eero Saarinen, Frank O. Gehry, Rafael Viñoly, Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, Anne G. Tyng, John M. Johansen, Kevin Roche, Laurinda Hope Spear, and Cesar Pelli.

National Academicians: Then and Now traces the work of four artists and one architect by pairing diploma presentations – the artwork contributed by an artist or architect upon their induction into the Academy – with works from other stages of their careers. All the participants, who are National Academicians (NAs), work with the Academy’s curatorial staff to select appropriate works to pair with the diploma presentations in combinations that illustrate the ongoing role that Academicians are playing in the development of American art and architecture. Selected based on a diversity of styles and the longevity of their careers, the participants are artists Elizabeth Catlett, Malcolm Morley, Joan Snyder, and Janet Fish, and architect Thom Mayne.

Aligning Abstraction brings together a selection of recent diploma presentations by newly admitted members. Each year the National Academy receives around 15 works of art that are new members' diploma presentations on acceptance to the Academy. Proposed as representative examples of the artists' work and accepted upon review by members of the Academy, the works now constitute a collection of over 7,000 paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and architectural models. Contemporary Selections: Aligning Abstraction are exhibited in the Academy's Ross Gallery, which beginning in September 2011 will be dedicated to contemporary work from the Academy's collection and allow for the regular exhibition and rotation of both newly acquired diploma works as well as themed installations of contemporary work from the collection. Exhibiting artists will include Bill Jensen, Harriet Korman, Melissa Meyer, Judith Murray, David Reed, Stephen Westfall, and others.

185th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art

123#as February 17 - June 8, 2010

The 185th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art featured 65 emerging and established artists selected by a jury of National Academicians. This biennial invitational is an inter-generational exhibition of non-Academicians that offers an opportunity for the public to preview new artistic directions in contemporary American art. Seen from the perspective of distinguished American artists, this national exhibition includes artists working in the New York area and the Eastern region as well as the Midwest, West Coast, and as far away as Hawaii.

Click here to read The New York Times review of the 185th Annual Invitational.

Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009

July 8 - November 15, 2009

Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009 examined the critical role the human figure has played in the Nation’s art for the past 189 years. Transcending chronological, stylistic, and generational boundaries the exhibition presented 160 works drawn from the National Academy’s important and wide ranging collection of American art, as well as an intriguing selection of works by contemporary artists who carried on the figurative tradition in new and adventurous ways.

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The 184th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art featured 189 National Academy artist-members exhibiting their work. From figurative to abstraction, the art covered many different styles and mediums within the categories of painting, sculpture, works on paper and architectural renderings and models. This year over $55,000 in prizes was awarded. This exhibition was generously supported by a grant from the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and with the Public Funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. Click here to read more.

This year, New York State and its many communities are celebrating a yearlong series of events to commemorate the 400th anniversary of New York State and the dual anniversaries of the voyages of English Captain Henry Hudson and Frenchman Samuel de Champlain. Within a century of their discoveries, the waterways that now bear the names Hudson and Champlain merged into one vital corridor at the epicenter of global commerce, politics and ideas. To celebrate these simultaneous Quadricentennials – as well as the 200th anniversary of the successful maiden steamboat journey of Robert Fulton up the Hudson River– the National Academy exhibition, American Waters revealed a unique historical perspective through select paintings of rural and urban American landscapes captured by generations of American artists.
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