Lee Krasner included in "Night Vision: Nocturnes in American Art, 1860-1960" at Bowdoin Co

Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) will be presenting the first major museum survey dedicated to scenes of the night in American art from 1860 to 1960—from the introduction of electricity to the dawn of the Space Age. Night Vision: Nocturnes in American Art will bring together 90 works in a range of media—including paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs—created by such leading American artists as Ansel Adams, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Lee Krasner, Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Ryder, John Sloan, Alfred Stieglitz, and Andrew Wyeth, among others. Featuring exceptional works from the Museum’s collection as well as loans from prestigious public and private collections across the United States, the exhibition will provide visitors with an opportunity to consider transformations in American art across generations and traditional stylistic confines. Organized by Bowdoin curator Joachim Homann, Night Vision will demonstrate the popularity of the theme with American artists of diverse aesthetic convictions and investigate how they responded to the unique challenges of picturing the night.

The works featured in Night Vision will reflect the broad range of subject matters that attracted artists to night scenes—including the reflections of moonlight on ocean waves, encounters in electrified urban streets, and firework celebrations. Across the range of works presented in Night Vision, visitors will see how reduced visual information and an altered perception in the dark tested artists’ ability to render shadow, light, and form. This lack of light ultimately resulted in less illustrative scenes and transformed the night into an arena for stylistic experimentation and the rise of abstraction in the early mid-twentieth century.

Night Vision is on view June 28 through August 14, 2015.

Bowdoin College students provide tours of the exhibition Tuesday through Sunday at 2:00 p.m.

Bowdoin College Museum of Art

9400 College Station

Brunswick, ME 04011

207.725.3275

artmuseum@bowdoin.edu

For more information, visit the Bowdoin College Museum of Art website.

Image: Lee Krasner, Assault on the Solar Plexus, 1961, oil on canvas, 81 x 58 inches (205.7 x 147.3 centimeters). © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Robert Miller Gallery.

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