The Addison’s permanent collection has grown exponentially since the museum opened its doors in 1931. The founding collection, comprised of some 400 works including masterpieces by Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and James McNeill Whistler, reflects the art world of the time and the taste and aesthetic sensibility of the collectors who helped shape it. In the ensuing decades and continuing to the present day, the Addison has aggressively yet thoughtfully acquired works of art for the collection to both build on its strengths and address its gaps and omissions. By no means complete or comprehensive, the 25,000 objects now in the collection allow the museum to convey a more expansive and nuanced picture of the American experience from the 18th century to today. Free Association: New Acquisitions in Context demonstrates how recently acquired works complement the Addison’s extant holdings and help us to see the collection in novel ways, drawing out new narratives, juxtapositions, and conversations across time and media.
Occupying the entirety of the Addison’s second level, each gallery will be anchored by one or more recent acquisitions, situated in thematic conversation with works that have previously entered the Addison’s collection throughout its nearly 100-year history. These dialogues center around particular strengths of the Addison’s renowned holdings—images of the American West, street photography, queer modernism, Bauhaus artists in America, and Minimalist art—or themes that surface across time periods and stylistic movements, including the body and nature, classical mythology, domestic interiors, and the depiction of light. For example, works by Sue McNally, Henry Payer, and Spencer Finch offer fresh and often challenging perspectives on the American West, joining those produced by Carleton Watkins, William Zorach, and Ansel Adams. In another gallery, Steve Locke’s Homage to the Auction Block provides an alternate point of entry into Josef Albers’s color theory, simultaneously paying homage to Albers while intertwining the legacies of modernism and racial injustice. Taken together, this constellation of installations offers new ways of looking at a collection that is endlessly generative and constantly reinterpreted.
