The Hudson River Museum, located just up the hill from the Glenwood train station in Yonkers, is a museum focused on housing American Art and supporting community events. The museum opened its exhibit “Modern Women/Modern Vision” on Jan. 30, featuring artwork on loan from the Bank of America Art in our Communities Program.
The exhibit features influential photographic prints from women in photography across America’s history, organized into sections by chronological order, beginning with a striking black wall featuring work from the early 1900’s. The remainder of the exhibit holds many iconic photographs, such as “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange and selected works from “Changing New York” by Berenice Abbott.
The Hudson River Museum, while not specifically curating the exhibit, did make a big contribution to how the visitor experiences the exhibit.
Laura Vookles, cChair of the Curatorial Department at Hudson River Museum, said, “We have an outside designer we work with and we talk to her about the show, the themes, we show her the art, we give her wordplay, what we think the exhibit is going to mean to people, or what it means to us. And she comes up with some designs to show us. So this is our contribution, thinking ‘what is it going to look like here?’”
On April 28, the photography major and AP art, will be traveling to see this exhibit.
This trip was organized by Luke Wilde, Upper School visual arts teacher. Wilde added, “I feel like the Hudson River Museum is an untapped resource that we have, and I want to build a connection with them because it’s so close. It’s one of the biggest museums in Westchester and has a lot of prominent artists.”
Interim Chair of the Visual Arts Department and Photography Teacher Rachel Langosch said, “Historically, there is a canon of old, white male photographers. And, while they did pave the road for later photographers, it’s important to see what other photographers have done outside of that group.”
The trip is also intended to be a formative experience for students preparing their longer and more thoughtful body of work projects.
Wilde, who teaches the AP art class, said, “I thought that this would be a good opportunity for them to be able to see that you can have multiple artists doing different things, but there can be this unifying thing you can create just by putting these works of art in proximity to one another, then you’re already creating conversation.”
Langosch, whose Photography Major class is currently in the process of creating their bodies of work, added, “I also think it’s important for the photography students to see the images printed up on the wall instead of on a screen. When you visit a museum and observe the images in person, there’s a quietness that you don’t get when looking at them on a computer screen.”
