The Terra Foundation for American Art (Chicago, Ill.) has made a major grant to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in support of a reinstallation of the Loeb’s Founding Galleries, home of the mid-nineteenth century works of the Hudson River School that were part of the College’s original art collection. Since its inception in 1864, Vassar’s art museum has maintained a strong collection of nineteenth-century American landscapes, established through an early gift of works by contemporaneous artists such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. Paintings from this original donation currently form the core of a regular display designed to celebrate the intertwined foundings of both the College’s art museum and the Hudson River School.

Recognizing the need for a thoughtful reassessment of these works of art, the Loeb will undertake a focused interrogation of the origins and legacy of the American landscape tradition, grounded in local New York histories and Hudson Valley geographies. Using the Hudson River School as a springboard, Terra Foundation’s grant will support the efforts of Curator John Murphy and Loeb colleagues as they reevaluate land-based artistic practices in America through the critical lenses of race, gender, ecocatastrophe, and labor histories. An advisory group composed of Indigenous scholars, artists of color, Vassar faculty, and other partners will contribute to a renewed analysis of the Loeb’s American art collection and the development of new strategies for display and recontextualization that reflect today’s insights and values.