Hudson River MuseumPartner Story

With the support of Art Bridges’s Partner Loan Network program, the Hudson River Museum (HRM) was able to reinterpret their permanent collection, with loans from the Joslyn Art Museum as the catalyst for the update. The loan includes twelve artworks in total from the Joslyn Art Museum, eleven of which were incorporated into the Hudson River Museum's 14-month exhibition, Order/Reorder: Experiments with Collections, and the twelfth included in an alternative gallery.

The main goal of Order/Reorder was to explore ways of looking at American artworks of different medias that reconsider past and present expressions of the American identity and modes of artistic expression. One important theme of the exhibition is ownership and access to land along with the current efforts by artists to combat erasure. Art as a means of creating space plays a role in two different sections of the exhibition- one about finding home and another about modes of abstractions.

The twelfth artwork, Albert Bierstadt’s Dawn at Donner Lake, California, was displayed alongside HRM’s paintings by Bierstadt, The Burning Ship and Untitled Seascape (Alaska). Toward the end of the loan period in summer of 2022, the artwork was moved to be part of the exhibition, Collection Spotlight: Albert Beirstadt, which was housed in the Collection Galleries adjacent to other Hudson River School paintings.

HRM hosted a series of events and interactive experiences for their audience to learn more about these artworks and themes, hosting both virtual and in-person talks. One of the virtual panels entitled, Romanticizing the West, featured a conversation about Westward expansion and the culturally determined concepts of the human relationship to nature. In person, HRM hosted a conversation, We are Still Here: A Conversation with Photographers Jeremy Dennis and Ron Tarver, which explored the hidden history of Black and Native American communities in the west and Black cowboy culture.

In addition to talks, HRM also created an interactive public space. Named after the exhibition, Order/Reorder: Create Your Own Exhibition was a large wall installation in the museum's lobby that featured a selection of moveable Velcro-backed reproductions of artworks that appear in the exhibition. This interactive experience invited visitors to create their own exhibitions by making pairings and juxtapositions according to their own insights and preferences. This was created in part with the Art Bridges’ Learning and Engagement team and grant.

This exhibition allowed HRM to continue their goal of reaching out to diverse groups in their community. Their focus is to reach traditionally marginalized groups such as African Americas, Latinx, LGBTQ+, seniors, and at-risk students with their exhibitions and programs.

In addition to their community outreach, they demonstrated their commitment to equity in representation in the Museum’s collection. The HRM collection includes over 100 artworks in all mediums that share various perspectives and lived experiences.

We love that HRM’s innovative lobby engagement activity specifically asked the public to express their curatorial preferences for the artwork they have seen though the museum. It allowed the public to share their own unique interpretation of the artworks.

We also loved HRM’s placement of the artworks within their permanent collection. They used their loans as part of the Partner Loan Network to add new dimensions to their collection and expand it with two unique exhibitions.