EXHIBITIONS

The life and work of Frederic Church (1826–1900) was indelibly shaped by global travel. Early trips took him to South America, across the northeastern United States, to Jamaica, and to the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Later he visited Europe and the Near Middle East, and in his final decades he made 15 winter sojourns in Mexico. The designed landscape, global collections, and striking architecture of the home he and his wife Isabel named “Olana” reflect the many worlds through which he traveled.

Frederic Church: Global Artist examines the artist in his own time and demonstrates his continuing relevance for today’s audiences. Co-curated by Elizabeth Kornhauser, Tim Barringer, and Jennifer Raab, Frederic Church: Global Artist will unite drawings and oil sketches from Church’s travels with examples of his large, extravagantly detailed paintings produced for public exhibition. In addition to rarely seen works from the Olana collection, the exhibition will feature loans from a number of major public and private collections, including the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, The New York Historical, and The Terra Foundation for American Art.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a groundbreaking new publication from Yale University Press in association with The Olana Partnership, also titled Frederic Church: Global Artist, co-edited by Barringer, Kornhauser, and Raab. This lavishly illustrated volume features original essays by scholars from across the humanities that reveal Church as an artist whose works engage with questions of industrialization and environmental destruction, the rise and fall of empires, the construction of national identity, and the cataclysmic effects of slavery and civil war.

Frederic Church: Global Artist is curated by Elizabeth Kornhauser, Curator Emerita, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Senior Curator and Chair, The Frederic Church Bicentennial Committee, The Olana Partnership; Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art, Yale University; and Jennifer Raab, Professor in the History of Art, Yale University.

Generous support for this exhibition and the accompanying publication has been provided by:

• Lead Sponsor, Richard T. Sharp
• The Wyeth Foundation
• The Lunder Foundation
• The Warner Foundation
• Julie Graham
• Elizabeth and Richard Miller

Donors to The Olana Partnership’s Frederic Church 200 Fund, with special appreciation to members of the Frederic Church 200 Committee

The exhibition Frederic Church: Global Artist is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

The Olana Partnership is the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit cooperative partner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation at Olana State Historic Site.