The Addison Gallery, located on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, is free and open to the public. Plan your visit >
Our Mission
Home to a world-class collection of American art, the Addison Gallery, located on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, presents an adventurous exhibition program, hosts a vital artist-in-residence program, and works collaboratively with students and faculty at the Academy and in neighboring communities. Through our ongoing query What is America?, the Addison seeks to engage with the history of American art and American experience—past, present, and future.
About Our Collection
Comprised of more than 25,000 works in all media—painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, prints, and decorative arts—from the 18th century to the present, the Addison Gallery’s collection of American art is one of the most important in the world.
The museum’s founding collection included major works by such prominent American artists as John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, John Twachtman, and James McNeill Whistler.
In the nine decades since, aggressive purchasing and generous gifts have added works by such artists as Mark Bradford, Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Marsden Hartley, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Kerry James Marshall, Eadweard Muybridge, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Charles Sheeler, Lorna Simpson, John Sloan, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Frank Stella, Kara Walker, and Stanley Whitney.
Today is National Lobster Day! 🦞
I don’t want to make this Instagram page a safe place for people to talk about David Foster Wallace so I’m not going to say anything about how one might go about celebrating this “holiday” (definitely NOT with drawn butter). Instead, please enjoy this Abercrombie & Fitch outtake—I mean, c. 1960 George Daniell photograph of a lobsterman named Richard Butler (now on view in Sea Change). Lobsters were apparently so physically attracted to Butler that they would allow him to simply pluck them out of the ocean with his bare hands. Consider the lobster!
George Daniell (1911-2002), Richard Butler, Oak Point, Trenton, Maine, c. 1960s. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase, 2004.26
#georgedaniell #lobster #nationallobsterday #maine #lobstering #lobsterman #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
Exciting program alert!
Steering into the Future: Oct. 1, 1:30 - 2:30
Join us for a rare opportunity to touch a model ship and learn about making art more accessible to all audiences. This program is free and open to all ages.
While you’re here, make sure to explore the Addison's fall exhibitions, which include a rearrangement of the beloved model ship collection and artworks related to the ocean.
#modelship #teachingmuseum #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
Happy birthday to the pioneering Light and Space artist, @laddiejohndill!
Raised, in part, by a mathematician stepfather who helped develop night vision technologies and would leave electronic equipment scattered around the house, Laddie John Dill recalls that he “grew up with laser beams running down the hall. And don’t touch that or you’ll die—that kind of thing . . . Things that I actually work with now.” Dill studied painting and sculpture at the Chouinard Art Institute but moved toward unconventional materials such as light, glass, and sand after receiving his BFA in 1968. Fellow artist Robert Irwin introduced him to Rio Score’s custom neon sign shop in Los Angeles, where he learned how to manipulate electrified gases like argon, helium, mercury, neon, and xenon, and how to weld, shape, and color glass tubing. Dill applied these skills to his art practice and began creating his Light Sentences, wall-mounted sculptures that comprise thin, straight neon fixtures made of radiant sequences of multicolored light. As in Rising Moon, created in response to the 1969 moon landing, these works can hang in vertical or horizontal orientations, casting softly glowing light onto the wall.
Dill’s Rising Moon is on view for the first time at the Addison is Free Association: New Acquisitions in Context in a gallery dedicated to, what else, light!
Laddie John Dill (born 1943). Rising Moon, 1969. Argon, mercury, glass tubing, transformer, and wires. Museum purchase, 2022.58
#laddiejohndill #lightandspace #lightsentence #lightart #argon #mercury #californiaartist #southerncalifornia #americanart #whatisamerica #freeassociation #addisongalleryofamericanart
“I was living in Monterey, a place where the classic photographers - the Westons, Wynn Bullock and Ansel Adams - came for a privileged view of nature. But my daily life very rarely took me to Point Lobos or Yosemite; it took me to shopping centers, and gas stations and all the other unhealthy growth that flourished beside the highway. It was a landscape that no one else had much interest in looking at. Other than me.”—Lewis Baltz
Born on this day in 1945 in Newport Beach, California, the American photographer Lewis Baltz rose to prominence after his work was included in William Jenkins’ seminal exhibition entitled New Topographics: Photographs of Man-Altered Landscapes at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. The images gathered in this show marked a radical break from traditional views of unaltered, romanticized landscapes to what Jenkins described as a more “neutral” approach. Baltz, according to his 2014 obituary in the New York Times, created “caustic but formally beautiful black-and-white images of parking lots, office parks, industrial garage doors and the backs of anonymous warehouses [that] helped forge a new tradition of American landscape photography in an age of urban sprawl.”
The Addison has an extensive collection of the work of Lewis Baltz, including the entirety of his The Tract Houses (1971), Nevada (1977), and Candlestick Point (1984-88) series. Find Baltz’s work on view at the Addison in Free Association: New Acquisitions in Context.
Lewis Baltz (1945-2014)
Southwest Wall, Vourath, 2424 McGaw, Irvine, 1974. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase, 1976.17
East Wall, McGaw Laboratories, 1821 Langley, Costa Mesa, 1974. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase, 1976.36
North West Wall Unoccupied Industrial Sales, 17875 C&D Sky Park Circle, Irvine, 1974. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase, 1976.35
South Corner, Riccar American Company, 3184 Pullman, Costa Mesa, 1974. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase, 1976.33
#lewisbaltz #newtopographics #irvine #sprawl #industrialpark #suburbia #irvine #southerncalifornia #californiaphotography #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
"If I am looking for a story at all, it is in my relationship to the subject - the story that tells me, rather than that I tell" —Bruce Davidson
Happy 90th birthday to the great American photographer @brucedavidsonphoto, born on this day in 1933 in Oak Park, Illinois.
The Addison is honored to hold over 80 prints by this master of documentary photography, including the entirety of his seminal 1959 series Brooklyn Gang.
Bruce Davidson (born 1933). Selection of works from Brooklyn Gang, 1959, printed 1997. Gelatin silver prints. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, purchased as the gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010)
#brucedavidson #brooklyngang #magnumphotos #brooklyn #newyorkcity #1950s #1950sstyle #streetgang #documentaryphotography #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
We’re back!
Today marked the public debut of our fall exhibition season. Here are a few snaps of our brand new exhibitions to entice you to come visit!
Do you hate nice weather? Come to the Addison this Labor Day weekend!
Don’t miss Hayes Prize 2023: Reggie Burrows Hodges, Turning a Big Ship; Sea Change; and Free Association: New Acquisitions in Context!
#reggieburrowshodges #hayesprize #addisonartistcouncil #seachange #freeassociation #turningabigship #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
“My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with.” —Oprah Winfrey
We interrupt our August social media exile to celebrate National Potato Day. Remember when Dan Quayle made that poor kid misspell potato by forcing him to add an “e” to the end of the word during a spelling bee? Remember when a committing an egregious spelling error (and going after Murphy Brown) was enough to tank an entire presidential campaign? I yam sorry for getting political there.
🥔 Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022). Baked Potato, 1966. Cast resin, painted with acrylic, Shanango china dish. 4 1/2 in. x 10 1/2 in. x 7 1/4 in. Museum purchase, 1966.32
#nationalpotatoday #potato #potatoe #danquayle #1992 #murphybrown #claesoldenburg #popart #popsculpture #slingblade #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.” —John Hersey
Wayne F. Miller (1918-2013). Site of the Epicenter of the Bomb Blast near the Heart of the City. A Japanese Soldier Walks Where an Army Barracks Once Stood, Hiroshima, Japan, September 1945. Gelatin silver print. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, gift of the Wayne F. Miller Family, 2023.66
#hiroshima #waynemiller #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart #johnhersey
UPDATED 9/9/2023: Today we celebrate Swiss socialite, fashion icon, New Yorker par excellence, and muse to millions, Miss Jocelyn Wildenstein (née Jocelyne Périsset). We had incorrectly reported (blame Wikipedia!) that she was was born on August 5th, 1940 (fake news!) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Many thanks to @lloydklein for correcting us! Jocelyne was born on September 7th, 1945! Happy belated 78th birthday and thank you for setting the record straight! Meow! ALSO—this wonderful photograph is CURRENTLY ON VIEW in Free Association: News Acquisitions in Context!
Jonathan Becker (born 1954). Jocelyn Wildenstein, 1998, printed 2020. Inkjet print. Addison Gallery of American Art, Purchased as the gift of Katherine D. and Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971, and P 2005, 2007, 2010), 2021.41/©Jonathan Becker
#jonathanbecker #jocelynwildenstein #celebrityportrait #socialite #delacroix #daschund #pattern #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
We’re busy preparing for our fall exhibitions and are excited to start sharing more of what’s to come! We’re particularly thrilled to share a sneak peek of Hayes Prize 2023: Reggie Burrows Hodges, Turning a Big Ship (September 1st through December 31st)!
In his first museum solo show, Reggie Burrows Hodges presents a new body of work that contemplates the notion of turning a big ship—of marshalling collective will and labor to resist a powerful current. The sloop and the sea captain are central motifs, as Hodges engages with and expands the tradition of maritime painting.
In Hodges’s compositions, an inky black ground peeks through gauzy layers of color. Masts and sails morph into female forms that steward and navigate vessels through uncertain waters. In earlier work, the artist captured glimpses into intimate, personal histories, rendering quiet scenes of community or solitude in soft focus, as if filtered through the hazy lens of memory. With this new subject, Hodges casts his gaze on a broader narrative: as the poet Derek Walcott writes, “the sea is History.” This history—one of both exploration and exploitation—forms another ground for the paintings, surfacing as clearly as his black underpainting. Yet, simultaneously, these paintings are oriented toward the future: redirecting the ship requires the collective embrace of possibility and change.
Reggie Burrows Hodges is the inaugural recipient of the Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. Prize, awarded by the Addison Artist Council (AAC).
This exhibition is sponsored by the Addison Artist Council and AAC Founders Alison Beaumont Hoeven ’83, Nicholas ’94 and Sasha Olney, and Sarah ’83 and Nathanael ’83 Worley; the Winton Family Fund; and the Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence Fund.
All images © Reggie Burrows Hodges and are provided courtesy of the artist and Karma (@karmakarma9).
Sloop: Refuge, 2022. Sea pastel on linen. 49 3/4 x 60 1/2 inches.
Sloop: Eldaz Crossing, 2022. Acrylic and pastel on canvas. 108 7/8 x 131 inches.
December Ruth, 2022. Acrylic and pastel on linen. 52 x 63 inches.
#reggieburrowshodges #hayesprize #addisonartistcouncil #addisongalleryofamericanart
LAST CALL! Today (Sunday, July 30th) is your final opportunity to see our wonderful slate of current exhibitions before they close forever! You really don’t want to miss Alison Elizabeth Taylor: The Sum of It, Women and Abstraction: 1741-Now, and Lavaughan Jenkins: Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence. We’re open today from 1:00-5:00. Hope to see you in the galleries!
Please note that the Addison will be closed during the month of August for reinstallation. We’ll be sharing more about our exciting fall exhibitions in the coming days!
Installation photographs by @juliafeatherphoto.
#alisonelizabethtaylor #womenandabstraction #phillipsacademy #andover #exhibitions #lavaughanjenkins #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart
Flat feet!
Today the Addison joins every other museum in America in promoting the release of Barbie. We think it is essential for organizations like ours to leverage our immense instagram followings to provide free advertising for small, independent films produced by mom and pop multinational corporations like Paramount and Mattel.
In all seriousness, Barbie is a fantastic, funny, moving, smart, and subversive film. Yes, Barbie is corporate propaganda—but it is 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘵 corporate propaganda, and that should count for something. I, for one, am excited to see Mattel extract more value from their intellectual property—who else can’t wait for Terrence Malick’s take on Hot Wheels?
Laurie Simmons. Two Shoes/Fish Tank/Dresser from In and Around the House, 1977. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase and partial gift of the artist, 2015.50
#lauriesimmons #barbie #barbiemovie #mattel #gretagerwig #kenergy #kenough #ken #justken #corporatepropaganda #picturesgeneration #inandaroundthehouse #feminism #feministphotography #prisonofmasculinity #americanart #whatisamerica #addisongalleryofamericanart #barbieday
