EXHIBITIONS
EXHIBITIONS
Past Exhibitions
Olana’s Coachman’s House Gallery | June 9 - October 27, 2013
The Olana Partnership and the Hudson Opera House presented the exhibition Art Meets Art: Perspectives On and Beyond Olana. The exhibition guest curated by Richard Roth showcased thirty-five contemporary artists who live and work in the area around Hudson, New York. The exhibition displayed photographs, paintings, posters and multi-media works inspired by Olana: the family home, studio, estate and working farm created as an environment embracing architecture, art, landscape and views by the eminent Hudson River School painter, Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900).
The Evelyn and Maurice Sharp Gallery | May 19 - October 31, 2012
Nearly a half century ago, Olana was almost destroyed. Olana Preservation, a group of concerned art historians, preservationists and individuals living in the Hudson Valley and New York City, joined forces to save Frederic Church’s three-dimensional masterpiece. A LIFE Magazine article entitled “Must This Mansion Be Destroyed?” brought national attention to the campaign and ensured the venture’s success. In 1966 Olana Preservation and New York State partnered to purchase Olana and establish it as a state historic site. This collaborative effort has provided a standard of excellence for the preservation of this national treasure— moving well beyond “the mansion” to undertake major restoration projects throughout the 250-acre designed landscape.
The Evelyn and Maurice Sharp Gallery | May 26 - October 30, 2011
Two weeks before the scheduled debut of Hudson River School landscape painter Frederic Church’s masterwork The Icebergs, Fort Sumter was bombarded marking the start of the American Civil War. Instead of cancelling the unveiling of the painting at Goupil’s Gallery, Church re-titled his masterpiece: “The North” Church’s Picture of Icebergs showing his support for the northern cause.
Olana Coachman’s House Gallery | June 18 - October 30, 2011
Brandt Bolding’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the northeastern part of the U.S. and have appeared in newspapers, journals, and publications by various preservation organizations in New York State. He became interested in historic preservation in the course of his architectural and interior design work, photographing and recording historical architectural details.
Olana Coachman’s House | June 5 - October 31, 2010
Larry Lederman is a photographer and writer who has traveled to many of the locations Frederic Church visited. This exhibition displayed photographs of a number of sites that Frederic Church painted and sought to evoke his artistic vision and explore his art.
June 5 - October 31, 2010
In 1865, Frederic Church, an avid traveler with a special passion for the tropics, journeyed to Jamaica. This was unlike his previous expeditions, as he and his wife, Isabel, were escaping from intense personal grief: the loss of their two young children. Throwing himself into the exploration and documentation of the island, the renowned artist produced a variety of works ranging from delicate pen sketches of palm trees to oil sketches of the atmospheric Blue Mountains and brilliant sunsets.
Evelyn and Maurice Sharp Gallery | May 23 - October 12, 2009
The site is the result of a careful study of the river-banks, and commands so many views of varied beauty, that all the glories of the Hudson may be said to circle it. – H. W. French, Art and Artists in Connecticut, 1879. In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name. This exhibition marked the Quadricentennial of his discovery by highlighting Frederic Church’s sketches of the prospect from his hilltop home overlooking the river.
Olana State Historic Site | May 12, 2017 - November 3, 2018
Walking the carriage roads Frederic Church created, one becomes enchanted—not only with the experience of the surrounding beauty, but also with the notion that in the twenty-first century one is having a parallel experience with the most influential early American painter from The Hudson River School of Art, by literally walking in Church’s footsteps.