This is the third exhibition in a series highlighting key strengths of the Addison’s renowned collection of American art from the 17th century to the present day. While we acknowledge—and work to remedy—the gaps and omissions in our holdings, their remarkable breadth, depth, and quality across media are cause for celebration. With over 29,000 objects from which to choose, this series offers countless frameworks through which to engage with the Addison’s unparalleled collection.
This iteration of Playing to Our Strengths unfolds across four distinct galleries that explore how American artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries grappled with the inherently contradictory nature of modern life, laying bare the tensions between appearance and reality, the rational and irrational, the orderly and the chaotic. Starting to your left, the first gallery conveys an idealized vision of American life at the turn of the 20th century, positioning Impressionist and American Renaissance paintings in dialogue with Pictorialist photographs. These interrelated movements shared a commitment to capturing ephemeral moments of beauty, often depicting tranquil landscapes and scenes of quiet domesticity through soft, atmospheric techniques. The second gallery confronts the “real” through works by artists of the Ashcan School and social realist photographers. These artists rejected romanticized depictions of American life, turning an unflinching gaze toward urbanization, immigration, industrial labor, and the social realities of an evolving nation.
Across the rotunda, the third gallery is devoted to Precisionism, a decidedly American modernist movement influenced by European Cubism, Purism, and Futurism that emerged in the destabilizing wake of World War I. Characterized by precisely rendered, simplified, clearly delineated and minimally detailed geometric forms, works by Precisionist artists extol the utopian promises of Machine Age technology, offering triumphant views of a new, industrialized American landscape of skyscrapers and smokestacks. In stark contrast to the optimism and refinement of the Precisionists, the works on view in the fourth gallery take you beneath the polished surface to examine the complex and frequently disordered lived realities of interwar New Yorkers navigating a rapidly modernizing and frequently alienating city.
Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by the Mollie Bennett Lupe & Garland M. Lasater Exhibitions Fund.
