Today at the Museum

Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea

April 25–August 22, 2010
Chilton Galleries

Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea, an exhibition of over 50 paintings, photographs, and works on paper, explores how visual artists of the modern period (1850–present) have represented coastal landscapes. Drawn from the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art and from local collections, Coastlines will open alongside The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850–1874, a touring exhibition on view at the DMA February 21–May 22, 2010, to give visitors both an expansive and an in-depth portrayal of the coastal experience over time and in various media.

The exhibition unfolds in several thematic groupings that bring together diverse works of art to explore a particular idea or question. Impressionist paintings, for example, will be shown alongside contemporary photographs, and the landscapes depicted in these images will include those from Maine to North Africa, Cape Cod to Martinique, and beyond.

Some of the DMA’s masterpieces featured in the exhibition include Berthe Morisot’s The Port of Nice, Childe Hassam’s Duck Island, and Yasuio Kuniyoshi’s Bather with Cigarette, along with Edward Hopper’s Lighthouse Hill and photographs by Frank Welch, Paul Cadmus, André Kertesz and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Organized across time, thematic groupings of artworks in the exhibition include the geographic dialogue between land and sea; the representation of coastal economics, including tourism in the visual arts; the emergence of a new and modern image of the bather; the symbolism of the coastline; and the coastal landscape as a purely visual phenomenon rather than a tangible place.

Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and curated by Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art.

Images:

Childe Hassam, Duck Island, 1906, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, bequest of Joel T. Howard, 1951.41

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled, 1972, Gelatin-silver print, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Paul Brauchle in honor of Kristen Brauchle, 1981.168

Edward Hopper, Lighthouse Hill, 1927, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Purnell, 1958.9

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

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