Past Exhibitions, 2001–2005

2005

American Impressions: An Arcadian Vision, Paintings from the Akron Art Museum
December 16, 2005–March 12, 2006
Spanning the years 1860 to 1917, the 35 paintings in this exhibition display the broad range of subject matter and technical developments that marked the Impressionist movement in Europe. The Impressionists' radical experiments with atmospheric effects, optical relationships between color and light, and brighter palettes likewise influenced their American counterparts, who successfully applied them to American landscapes and portraiture. Artists include William Merritt Chase, Frank Duveneck, Frederick Childe Hassam, George Inness, and John Twachtman among others.

19th-Century Ornaments and Decorations
November 25, 2005–January 8, 2006
Christmas decorations from Germany adorn the galleries of the Taft Museum of Art this holiday season. Traditional German feather trees, made of wire and goose feathers dyed green, are trimmed with rare Victorian ornaments dating from the 1870s. Also on display are German toys, figures, and dolls. Featured items include antique Belsnickles (papier-mâché Santas), Kugels (blown-glass ornaments with decorative tops), Dresdens (embossed paper ornaments), and free-blown, Victorian wire-wrapped ornaments. Festive greenery also decks the halls of the house. The Dining Room table is set for the holidays using antique silver.

Black Is a Color: African American Art from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
September 23–November 20, 2005
Drawn from the Corcoran’s permanent collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs by African American artists, this exhibition features 44 works made since the 1960s by artists who predominantly used a palette of black and white. The featured works address issues that have historically occupied African American artists: racial and cultural heritage, identity, history, protest, and spirituality. Among the artists represented are Robert Colescott, David Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Adrian Piper, Martin Puryear, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems.

An Impressionist Eye: Painting and Sculpture from the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation
June 10–August 28, 2005
Forever changing the course of art history, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists depicted everyday city and country life in a style that explored the transitory effects of color, light and atmosphere. Working in the last three decades of the 19th century, and reaching into the 20th, they found a public for their innovative art, which stood outside French traditional tastes and state-run exhibitions. This exhibition of approximately 30 paintings and sculptures includes works by Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. It also highlights the distinctly personal character of the private collection assembled by the Levins over a period of 40 years.

Turner Watercolors
June 24–August 21
Along with two major oil paintings, one from early in his career and one late, the Taft Museum of Art holds ten watercolors by Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775–1851). Spanning the first half of the 19th century, these watercolors depict landscapes of Switzerland, Germany, England, Scotland, and Italy. Historically, they broke new ground in the artistic fields of book illustration, travel views, and the watercolor medium itself.

James McNeill Whistler: Selected Works from the Hunterian Art Gallery
March 4–May 22, 2005
As the repository of the items left in Whistler's estate, the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland, owns the most extensive collection of Whistler's art, ranging from paintings to prints to sketch designs for costumes, interiors, and graphic images. Comprising this exhibition are 12 paintings (including Self-Portrait, about 1896, Red and Black-The Fan, about 1891-94, and Nocturne, 1875-77), 57 prints, and a selection of Whistler's personal belongings such as silverware, porcelain, letters, manuscripts, and books that enhance our understanding of this complex and innovative artist.

2004

Frontier Memories: 19th- and 20th-Century Art of the American West
December 3, 2004–February 6, 2005
The romance and reality of the American West come to life this winter in the Taft Museum of Art's Fifth Third Gallery. Frontier Memories: 19th- and 20th- Century Art of the American West features paintings, watercolors, and sculptures from an important private collection of American western art. Works in the exhibition portray westward expansion, scenes from settlers' daily lives, American Indian culture, working cowboys, and sublime landscapes of towering mountains. Artists featured include masters of the American West genre such as Henry Farny, George Catlin, Frederic Remington, Albert Bierstadt, Seth Eastman, Charles Bird King, Thomas Moran, and Charles M. Russell.

15 Retro/15 Active
November 1–30, 2004
Thirty photographs by photojournalist Melvin Grier, the Museum's 2004 Duncanson Artist-in-Residence, are on view in the Dater Education Room.

Through American Eyes: Two Centuries of American Art from the Huntington Museum of Art
September 10–November 7, 2004
Showcasing the diversity of American art, 73 works by 73 artists span 200 years. Dateing from the late 18th through the end of the 20th centuries, works in the exhibition compare how American artists from different backgrounds and time periods, working in different media, portray their world. Featured works include early 19th-century portraits by Gilbert Stuart and Samuel F.B. Morse; landscapes by George Inness, John Twachtman, and John Singer Sargent; 20th-century abstract paintings by Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell; prints by Edward Hopper, John Stewart Curry, Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, and Jim Dine; pioneering studio glass by Harvey Littleton and Dale Chihuly; and works by self-taught artists Edgar Tolson and Shields Landon Jones.

To Observe and Imagine: British Drawings and Watercolors, 1600–1900
May 15–August 15, 2004
To Observe and Imagine, a selection of 101 drawings and watercolors from the Morgan Library in New York City, ranged from works inspired by the imagination to those rooted in the careful observation of nature, tracing three centuries of artistic development in England. The exhibition offered further exploration of works by British artists in the Taft Museum of Art's permanent collection, including J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. It also featured works by William Blake, William Hogarth, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, among others.

2002

Museum within a Museum: Treasures from the Taft at the Cincinnati Art Museum
January 12, 2002–January 12, 2003
The exhibition Museum within a Museum, a collaboration between the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) and the Taft Museum of Art, displayed nearly 100 objects from the Taft permanent collections while the Museum was closed for renovation and expansion. These objects included Qing dynasty Chinese porcelains, 17th- and 18th-century watches, French Renaissance Limoges enamels, and European and American paintings.

2001

American Paintings from Procter & Gamble: The Historic Cincinnati Collection
March 16–June 17, 2001
At the request of John G. Smale, retired chairman of the Board and Chief Executive, in 1981 Procter & Gamble began assembling an impressive survey of American painters from the l9th and early 20th centuries who were born in the Ohio River Valley or who worked in the region. More than 35 oils werre presented to provide context for the Taft Museum of Art's small but choice collection of American paintings. Paintings by artists James Henry Beard, Thomas Satterwhite Noble, Robert S. Duncanson, William Louis Sonntag, Thomas Worthington Whittredge, Alexander Wyatt, John Twachtman, Lilly Martin Spencer, Robert Blum, Robert Henri, Elizabeth Nourse, Edward Potthast, and Henry F. Farny were included in this exhibition. (Catalogue)

Modern Masters: From Corot to Kandinsky
July 13–October 28, 2001
Organized by International Arts, Memphis, TN, from the Foundation Juntos Actuando, Mexico City, Mexico, this exhibition included 56 oils and works on paper surveying modern art from 1850 to 1973, including art by some of the most recognizable European masters such as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Eugene Boudin, Adolphe Bouguereau, Marc Chagall, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Salvador Dali, Raoul Dufy, Julien Dupre, Henri Fantin-Lantour, Paul Gauguin, Jean- Leon Germe, Juan Gris, Wassily Kandinsky, Leon-Augustin Lhermitte, Rene Magritte, Jean-Francois Millet, Gustave Moreau, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla y Baptiste, James Jacques Tissot, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Anders Zorn. (Catalogue)