In the galleries

At the funeral of Thomas Cole in 1848, William Cullen Bryant delivered an oration that described Cole's epic series The Voyage of Life (see the illustration below) as "a perfect poem." Those who have not traveled to Utica, New York, to see this group of paintings and other important examples of American fine and decorative arts at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute should put this destination on their list of places to visit. In the meantime, in New York City between November 16 and December 29, Hirschl and Adler Galleries is hosting an exhibition of seventy-nine objects drawn from the museum's collection. The show is entitled American Masterworks from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute: Celebrating an Educational Alliance with Pratt Institute.

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The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute was established in 1919 by the sisters Maria and Rachel Williams and their respective spouses, Thomas and his half-brother Frederick Proctor. The Williams sisters had received a substantial legacy from their parents, including a collection of Hudson River school paintings and works on paper assembled by their mother Helen Munson Williams. As both couples were childless, they decided to leave their art holdings to the people of central New York State. The museum opened in 1936 following the death of Maria Proctor and today has three divisions: performing arts, a museum of art, and a school of art. It was originally housed in Fountain Elms, the commodious Italianate house that had been built by Helen Munson and her husband James Watson Williams, and was furnished with mid-nineteenth-century furniture, then in the latest taste. The institute was greatly enriched in the 1950s when Edward Wales Root donated nearly eight hundred European, Japanese, and American prints and early twentieth-century American paintings and drawings. Among the latter are some four hundred works by Davis, Dove, Demuth, Hopper, Sheeler, Motherwell, de Kooning, and others.

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The Root donation prompted the commissioning of a new building, designed by Philip Johnson, which opened in 1960, and Fountain Elms became the showplace for much of the museum's important holdings of American decorative arts of the nineteenth century. By the 1980s the focus was on the acquisition of American drawings, and examples by John Frederick Kensett, Aaron Draper Shattuck, and Seth Eastman are among those on view in this exhibition. In 2000 the institute formed an alliance with Pratt Institute a renowned college of art and design in Brooklyn, New York. This successful program allows art students to spend two years studying and working in Utica followed by two years at Pratt's main campus in Brooklyn.

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The catalogue of the exhibition contains an essay by the director and chief curator of the museum Paul D. Schweizer. It may be obtained by telephoning Hirschl and Adler Galleries at 212-535-8810.

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