RIVER CROSSINGS: Contemporary Art Comes Home

On the cover of River Crossings is Martin Puryear’s sculpture Question. Question is a sphere with a stem branching out of its top to create an arch that bends to touch the floor.
Artist Stephen Hannock wearing a long white coat is blurred in movement as he pivots around on one leg while holding a long cord on the open floor of his studio.
A print of Horseshoe Falls in Ontario, Canada, the largest of the three falls that comprise Niagara Falls, shows a wall of whitewater crashing into the choppy waters of a pool at the base.
A Chuck Close self-portrait hangs on the yellow Stair Hall wall at Olana, the New York State Historic Site. Two patterned tapestry curtains drape either side of the staircase.
Kiki Smith’s bronze-and-gold leaf artwork, titled Wolf with Birds III, hangs on the wall under a staircase at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York.
In the Sitting Room at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, several paintings hang on yellow walls with white trim.
The view across the Hudson River from Olana shows low-hanging clouds that sit among rolling green hills and meadows.
Artist Don Gummer’s bronze sculpture titled House of Music sits on a concrete base in the woods at Olana.
In a black-and-white inkjet print of mist surrounding the silhouettes of low, rolling mountains, light shines through the clouds overhead.
A painting shows a blue background and a person wearing a white shirt and tan pants leaning all the way back on a swing, with arms stretched out straight above the body to hold the swing’s ropes.
In a photograph by artist Cindy Sherman, a woman stands against a gray wall in an ankle-length white dress and headwrap. She holds the palms of her hands open at her sides .
On the cover of River Crossings is Martin Puryear’s sculpture Question. Question is a sphere with a stem branching out of its top to create an arch that bends to touch the floor.
Artist Stephen Hannock wearing a long white coat is blurred in movement as he pivots around on one leg while holding a long cord on the open floor of his studio.
A print of Horseshoe Falls in Ontario, Canada, the largest of the three falls that comprise Niagara Falls, shows a wall of whitewater crashing into the choppy waters of a pool at the base.
A Chuck Close self-portrait hangs on the yellow Stair Hall wall at Olana, the New York State Historic Site. Two patterned tapestry curtains drape either side of the staircase.
Kiki Smith’s bronze-and-gold leaf artwork, titled Wolf with Birds III, hangs on the wall under a staircase at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York.
In the Sitting Room at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, several paintings hang on yellow walls with white trim.
The view across the Hudson River from Olana shows low-hanging clouds that sit among rolling green hills and meadows.
Artist Don Gummer’s bronze sculpture titled House of Music sits on a concrete base in the woods at Olana.
In a black-and-white inkjet print of mist surrounding the silhouettes of low, rolling mountains, light shines through the clouds overhead.
A painting shows a blue background and a person wearing a white shirt and tan pants leaning all the way back on a swing, with arms stretched out straight above the body to hold the swing’s ropes.
In a photograph by artist Cindy Sherman, a woman stands against a gray wall in an ankle-length white dress and headwrap. She holds the palms of her hands open at her sides .

RIVER CROSSINGS: Contemporary Art Comes Home

$50.00

FOREWORD BY: KEN BURNS
PREFACE BY: STEPHEN HANNOCK
ESSAYS BY: MARVIN HEIFERMAN AND MAURICE BERGER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: PETER AARON
BY: JASON ROSENFELD

Hardcover
10 x 11 inches, 120 pages
91 color plates + 17 black and white
ISBN 978-0-9888557-9-3

$50 | £40 | €48

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The unique and groundbreaking presentation of important contemporary art rarely seen in the traditional environs of the Hudson River Valley, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and Olana, Frederic Edwin Church’s Persian-inspired mansion, showcased the work of contemporary American artists such as Chuck Close, Cindy Sherman, Maya Lin, Martin Puryear, and Gregory Crewdson, some of the 30 artists who participated in this landmark show. Stephen Hannock, celebrated luminist painter and one of the exhibition’s co-curators, believes that this was “a terrific opportunity to open up contemporary art, as well as these historic properties, to audiences who [saw] firsthand these shared artistic concerns.”

The works of art selected for the exhibition were shown at the two venues to encourage visitors to experience both distinguished properties and the grandeur of their surroundings, and presented a complete overview and understanding of these contemporary works in a location where many art historians believe American art was born. The accompanying publication, River Crossings: Contemporary Art Comes Home, provides readers with a lavish record of this extraordinary and innovative exhibition, and offers unique and highly informative perspectives on the continuity of the American artistic tradition in one of the nation’s most historic locations.

In addition to an impressive plate section of more than 60 works with brief artist biographies and descriptive narratives for the individual works, this comprehensive presentation features noteworthy, exceptional contributions. Stephen Hannock’s preface details the development of this remarkable exhibition, while co-curator Jason Rosenfeld reveals in his essay the exhibition’s importance relative to historical perception as he considers Cole’s and Church’s support of contemporary art in their time. Cultural historian Maurice Berger considers the realities of race and gender from the nineteenth-century Hudson River Valley to the present, and Marvin Heiferman, curator and writer, examines photography in the exhibition and its connections to Church’s work and his use of the medium. Award-winning architectural and landscape photographer Peter Aaron generously provided the stunning installation, exterior, and landscape photographs, a gorgeous complement to this outstanding catalogue.