More Coming Attractions

Two more shows are in the works for our winter exhibition schedule and now have their own pages on our website:

Stollerized, a small, focused exhibition curated by fellow Blog Addison poster Jaime DeSimone, features thirteen black and white photographs by Ezra Stoller that were recently gifted to the Addison by long-time donor Stephen C. Sherrill (PA 1971). The crisp lines and orderly compositions of Ezra Stoller’s photographs document modern American architecture of the 1950s (see right).

Winslow Homer: Land and Sea, curated by Addison Director Brian Allen, brings together several of Winslow Homer's watercolors, prints, and paintings from the Addison's collection that focus on Homer's love of the outdoors. The show will also include a recently rediscovered and unknown Winslow Homer watercolor which has been in a private collection for over one hundred years and will be on public display here for the first time.

Both shows open here January 19th, so be sure to check them out the next time you're here at the museum!


James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives

Addison in the News

If you happened by the shop of your favorite antiques dealer or were perusing a selection of arts periodicals last week, you would have seen some well-known treasures from the Addison's Coming of Age exhibition on the cover of Antiques and the Arts Weekly.

In his comprehensive cover story, Stephen May writes:

"Since its founding in 1931, the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., has assembled an extraordinary collection of some of America's finest paintings and sculpture. It is surely the premier art collection in any American preparatory school and, indeed, one of the best collections of American art anywhere.

All this is abundantly clear in a grand traveling exhibition of more than 70 selections from the Addison collection, "Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s" on view at Southern Methodist University's Meadows Museum of Art through February 24. It is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Addison and ably curated by the Addison's associate director and curator Susan C. Faxon and William C. Agee, professor of art history at Hunter College and an Andover alumnus. "

For the full article, click here.


Maggie Adler
Director of Development

From Germany to New York to Andover...

For contemporary art lovers, there is more to the month of December than the holidays. Every December, Artforum magazine invites a range of artists, curators, and critics to reflect upon the past year in art and dedicates a section of the issue to the “best of.” This issue features detailed reviews of seven stimulating exhibitions in 2007 as well as twelve top ten lists from selected contributors. This segment of Artforum brings us from the Cologne Cathedral in Cologne, Germany to the Schaulager Museum in Basel, Switzerland and back to New York City.

Next stop, Andover, Massachusetts! The magazine also follows its usual format of reviewing current exhibitions. Pick up a copy of this month’s magazine to read the review of Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey, an exhibition featuring photographs and personal statements by Bey’s teenage subjects who defy stereotypes of American youth during this complicated age. Usha (on right) wrote, “I can speak four languages, I am an actress, and when I was about thirty seconds old I reached up and took my dad’s glasses off his face.” The photographs of other young people from Detroit to Orlando to New York will be on view at the Addison through December 30th.

Jaime DeSimone
Charles H. Sawyer Curatorial Fellow

A Report from Dallas

Today we hear from guest poster Brian T. Allen, the Addison's Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director, who has recently returned with this report from Dallas, Texas:

The Addison’s Coming of Age show has finally hit the road! On November 29th, I attended the gala opening of the exhibition at the Meadows Museum, the academic art museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In time-honored Texas tradition, it was quite a party. I was delighted to see so much support for the show from the wonderful arts establishment in Dallas. So many longtime supporters of the arts in the city told me how much they love the Addison and its fabled collection and how delighted they were to see the show come to town.

The Meadows has one of the greatest collections of Spanish art in the country. Since my dissertation was on the influence of Spanish art on American art in the early nineteenth century, I was very moved to see the Addison’s great treasures in close proximity to magnificent paintings by Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, El Greco, Goya, Sorolla, and others. Quite a conversation they will be having over the coming months.

The show next travels to the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and then to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Museum of Art-Fort Lauderdale.

Pictured above, l to r, are Mark A. Roglán, Director of the Meadows Museum, Gerald Turner, President of SMU, Linda Evans, President of the Meadows Foundation, and Brian T. Allen, Addison Director.

Coming Attractions

With all this talk about expansion and renovations, it is also important to keep in mind that we still have a full slate of new exhibitions coming here next year before we close to the public in July.

Eye on the Collection: Views and Viewpoints opens January 19th. Drawn from our permanent collection and organized into four subject areas: Figuration, Landscape, Urbanism, and Abstraction, this show will include a wide range of artists such as John Singleton Copley, Childe Hassam (see left), Theodore Roszak, and Barnett Newman.

On February 15th, our Opening Reception for our Winter Exhibitions will mark the public opening of Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury. Over 150 objects will examine the painting, architecture, furniture design, decorative and graphic arts, film, and music that launched mid-century modernism in the United States. The exhibition installation will feature a jazz lounge, a media bar with film, animation, and television programming, and a period art gallery.

Also be sure to mark your 2008 calendars for Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke (see right) opening April 12th and Carroll Dunham: A Print Survey, a new Addison traveling exhibition, opening here May 10th.

By the way, this is our 50th post to Blog Addison. We certainly hope you have enjoyed reading our updates and will continue to check in during the next few months as we open many new exciting exhibitions and prepare for our renovation and expansion.


James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives