Exhibit curator Vanessa Schmid describes a few pieces in the "Seeing Nature" show.
A new exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art comes from the personal collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. And he bought only the best.
Thirty-nine paintings are on display from some of the most famous artists in the world – starting in the 1600s. Exhibit curator Vanessa Schmid pointed to some of the highlights.
The “Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection exhibition presents masterworks spanning nearly four hundred years—from Jan Brueghel the Younger’s series devoted to the five senses to Canaletto’s celebrated views of Venice. It features landscapes by innovators including William Turner, Paul Cézanne, and Gustav Klimt. Paintings by Thomas Moran, Edward Hopper, David Hockney and others provide an American perspective on landscapes at home and abroad.
“These paintings, which have never been displayed together publicly before, offer a compelling view of how artists working in an array of styles have interpreted the landscape tradition over the last four centuries,” said Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director. “A highlight for visitors will be Birch Forest, 1903, a rare landscape by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, who was known for his Viennese society portraits. This will be the first time a work by Klimt has been on view at NOMA.”
Seeing Nature explores the development of landscape painting from direct interpretation of the natural world to expressions of artists’ experiences with their surroundings on land and sea. The exhibition reveals the power of landscape to locate the viewer in time and place—to record, explore, and understand the natural and man-made world.
“Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks” will be at the New Orleans Museum of Art through January 15. The exhibit will then close at the Seattle Art Museum early next year.
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