Painting a Nation is a major reinstallation of Shelburne Museum’s American paintings collection. The exhibition forms the core of a renewed emphasis and focus on American art and highlights themes of the collection’s strengths, particularly the New England landscape, genre painting, and portraiture.
American paintings were the last objects assembled by Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb before she died in 1960. Shelburne is the only museum in this region that can offer the breadth and depth of this group of paintings, which includes works by John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Winslow Homer, William Mathew Prior, Martin Johnson Heade, Albert Bierstadt, Fitz Henry Lane, Eastman Johnson, Grandma Moses, and Andrew Wyeth. Although many of the works have been loaned in recent years to museums around the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of American Folk Art, National Gallery of Art, and Amon Carter Museum of American Art, they have remained in storage at Shelburne Museum and this installation is the first time audiences have seen them in Vermont for over a decade.
The renovated Webb Gallery with new interior finishes and state of the art lighting will showcase this important collection for years to come. On view in Webb Gallery.
Museum Grounds