THE ARTIST’S GARDEN: AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM

Directed by Phil Grabsky. Narrated by Gillian Anderson.

Running time: 87 minutes

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes.

In 1886, the French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel brought a selection of his huge stock of impressionist paintings to New York, changing the course of art in America forever. American artists flocked to the French village of Giverny, home to the master impressionist Claude Monet, and cheered the French new wave: painting outdoors with a new found brilliance and vitality. As Europe recoiled against the work of Monet, Degas and Renoir, Americans embraced it and created their own style of impressionism.

The timing of Durand-Ruel’s transformative visit was perfect. As America steamed into the Industrial Age, urban reformers fought to create public parks and gardens: patches of beauty amid smokestacks and ash heaps. These gardens provided unlimited inspiration for artists and a never-ending oasis for the growing middle class, made up of increasingly independent women, who relished the writings of English horticulturalists Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. Meanwhile the rise of wide-circulation magazines cultivated the idea that gardening was a path to spiritual renewal amid industrial blight and the belief that artists should work in native landscapes.

As America made its epic move from a nation of farmers to a land of factories, the pioneering American Impressionists crafted a sumptuous visual language that told the story of an era.

The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Katherine Page, Curator of Art and Education at the Mennello Museum of American Art will be presenting a lecture on the curatorial ideas and highlights behind our latest exhibition, Impression and Reality.

Join us for this event contextualizing the paintings on view, which span  the time period of both American Impressionism and American Realism.

Katherine Page is a curator and educator with an established understanding and appreciation for art, cultural diversity, education, and community outreach all of which inform her curatorial and educational initiatives. Page has been responsible for designing instructional and interactive text, special programming, workshops, and tours that empower visitors of all backgrounds, ages and skill levels to make personal connections with exhibitions while exploring artistic methods.

Special exhibitions Page has curated include “Contemporary Expressions: Prints from Flying Horse Editions 1996-2021” (2022), “The Grand Portraits of Mr. Eddy Mumma” (2021), “American Artists in the Southwest: Gifts from the Melanson Holt Collection” with “American Paintings and Drawings from the Melanson Holt Collection” (2021, catalogue with essay), “Immersion into Compounded Time and the Paintings of Firelei Báez” (2019, catalogue with essay), “The Unbridled Paintings of Lawrence H. Lebduska” (2019, catalogue with essay), “Earl Cunningham” (2019), “John Baker: Mind Wealth” (2019), “Our Collection” (“Appreciating the Everyday” 2022, “Ephemeral” 2021, “Visionary Form in Southern Black Folk Art” 2021, “Portrait of a Woman” 2021), “Our Orlando” (“Construct” 2020, “Making Sense of Our World” 2018, 2017), and American Youth (“Cause” 2020, “Future” 2018, “Identity” 2017).

Katherine Page, Curator of Art and Education at the Mennello Museum of American Art will be presenting a lecture on the curatorial ideas and highlights behind our latest exhibition, Impression and Reality.

Join us for this event contextualizing the paintings on view, which span  the time period of both American Impressionism and American Realism.

Katherine Page is a curator and educator with an established understanding and appreciation for art, cultural diversity, education, and community outreach all of which inform her curatorial and educational initiatives. Page has been responsible for designing instructional and interactive text, special programming, workshops, and tours that empower visitors of all backgrounds, ages and skill levels to make personal connections with exhibitions while exploring artistic methods.

Special exhibitions Page has curated include “Contemporary Expressions: Prints from Flying Horse Editions 1996-2021” (2022), “The Grand Portraits of Mr. Eddy Mumma” (2021), “American Artists in the Southwest: Gifts from the Melanson Holt Collection” with “American Paintings and Drawings from the Melanson Holt Collection” (2021, catalogue with essay), “Immersion into Compounded Time and the Paintings of Firelei Báez” (2019, catalogue with essay), “The Unbridled Paintings of Lawrence H. Lebduska” (2019, catalogue with essay), “Earl Cunningham” (2019), “John Baker: Mind Wealth” (2019), “Our Collection” (“Appreciating the Everyday” 2022, “Ephemeral” 2021, “Visionary Form in Southern Black Folk Art” 2021, “Portrait of a Woman” 2021), “Our Orlando” (“Construct” 2020, “Making Sense of Our World” 2018, 2017), and American Youth (“Cause” 2020, “Future” 2018, “Identity” 2017).

THE ART OF MAKING IT

Noted American Impressionist painter Frederick Carl Frieseke moved to northeast Florida in 1881 at the age of seven. Along with his father and sister, they lived in Floral Bluff, then outside the Jacksonville city limits, but now centrally located across the St. Johns River from downtown. The young boy was enchanted with his new surroundings. His family stayed four years before returning to Michigan. Although he would not return, Frieseke never forgot his time on the First Coast. In his mid-40s, while living in France, he created a series of watercolors and paintings inspired by his childhood. Hear about Florida through Frieseke’s eyes from Holly Keris, the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens’ J. Wayne & Delores Barr Weaver Chief Curator.

Holly Keris is the J. Wayne & Delores Barr Weaver Chief Curator at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens.  She has been with the Cummer Museum since 2003, where she stewards the institution’s cultural assets. Holly strives to bring the Museum’s permanent collection, exhibitions, and historic gardens to life for the broader community every day, as places of respite, inspiration, and conversation.

She received undergraduate degrees in History and Humanities from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, and a graduate degree in the History of Art from the University of Virginia. She is also completing a Certificate in Organizational Behavior through Harvard University’s extension program.  Prior to joining the staff at the Cummer Museum, Holly worked at the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, and for the City of Orlando’s Public Art Program.  She also spent three years as Curator of Collections at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach.

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Katherine Page, Curator of Art and Education at the Mennello Museum of American Art will be presenting a lecture on the curatorial ideas and highlights behind our latest exhibition, Impression and Reality.

Join us for this event contextualizing the paintings on view, which span  the time period of both American Impressionism and American Realism.

Katherine Page is a curator and educator with an established understanding and appreciation for art, cultural diversity, education, and community outreach all of which inform her curatorial and educational initiatives. Page has been responsible for designing instructional and interactive text, special programming, workshops, and tours that empower visitors of all backgrounds, ages and skill levels to make personal connections with exhibitions while exploring artistic methods.

Special exhibitions Page has curated include “Contemporary Expressions: Prints from Flying Horse Editions 1996-2021” (2022), “The Grand Portraits of Mr. Eddy Mumma” (2021), “American Artists in the Southwest: Gifts from the Melanson Holt Collection” with “American Paintings and Drawings from the Melanson Holt Collection” (2021, catalogue with essay), “Immersion into Compounded Time and the Paintings of Firelei Báez” (2019, catalogue with essay), “The Unbridled Paintings of Lawrence H. Lebduska” (2019, catalogue with essay), “Earl Cunningham” (2019), “John Baker: Mind Wealth” (2019), “Our Collection” (“Appreciating the Everyday” 2022, “Ephemeral” 2021, “Visionary Form in Southern Black Folk Art” 2021, “Portrait of a Woman” 2021), “Our Orlando” (“Construct” 2020, “Making Sense of Our World” 2018, 2017), and American Youth (“Cause” 2020, “Future” 2018, “Identity” 2017).

Deborah will present the true story of Laura Woodward (1834-1926), a member of the Hudson River School, and describe her times, when women artists largely had to make a choice: either domesticity or a professional career in landscape painting. Woodward came to Florida around 1889, fell in love with the state’s nature, and changed its history.

Deborah C. Pollack graduated with honors from Temple University with a degree in art history. As Deborah Courtney, she performed in numerous television commercials and, for three years starred on the soap opera Love of Life. She then became a fine art dealer and eventually, revisiting her background in art history, an author. Her books include Visual Art and the Urban Evolution of the New South, Palm Beach Visual Arts; Orville Bulman: An Enchanted Life and Fantastic Legacy; Felix De Crano: Forgotten Artist of the Flagler Colony; Bad Scarlett: The Extraordinary Life of the Notorious Southern Beauty Marie Boozer; Vintage Miami Beach Glamour: Celebrities and Socialites in the Heyday of Chic; Florida Sculptors and Their Work: 1880-2020; and Laura Woodward: The Artist Behind the Innovator Who Developed Palm Beach, which won an award from Florida Memorial University for making “a significant contribution to advancing the awareness of women’s history.” Pollack’s essays are in such books as the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and Central to Their Lives: Women Artists in the Johnson Collection. Articles have appeared in periodicals including the American Art Review, New York History Review, Tequesta (scholarly journal of HistoryMiami), Antiques and Art Around Florida, and Tustenegee. She lives with her husband, Edward, in Palm Beach, Florida, where they own Edward and Deborah Pollack Fine Art.