Lookout Mountain Mirror
Share your
news with us!
  • Home
  • Happenings
    • Lookout Community
    • School News
    • TN & GA Town News
    • Home & Garden
    • Local History
    • Good Reads
    • Recipe Roundup
    • Arts & Leisure
    • Travel
    • Movies with Merrile
    • Happenings at the Club
  • Advertising
  • Calendar
  • Subscriptions
  • About
  • Contact
  • Shop
  • Give & Support

Lookout Mountain
​Happenings

Check back often for up-to-date news, events and article previews between issues of the monthly Lookout Mountain Mirror.

Follow us on Facebook for more news

Guess What’s New in the Hunter Museum Mansion?

2/12/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
By Natalie Mault Mead

​From its neoclassical architecture to the large gold-leaf frames within its galleries, the Hunter Museum’s mansion represents a traditional, iconic – and often favorite – part of the museum for many visitors. The mansion galleries encompass the oldest portion of the Hunter Museum and today house our early American collection of itinerant portraiture, Victorian furniture, and Hudson River School landscape paintings. For many visitors, the mansion galleries display benign artworks that are easy to recognize and require little to no interpretation beyond exploring the subject or painterly technique. Viewers often see early American portraiture, for example, as a precursor to modern day selfies – an unassuming depiction of the sitter – but these early portraits capture a subject that Americans struggle with today: defining an American identity. Art from the past was often radical, even if we don’t recognize it as such today.

In keeping with our mission to engage diverse audiences in active dialogues about American art, the Hunter has recently started an exciting reexamination of these early American galleries. Our new plan seeks to present art from the past in such a way that viewers will better understand their historical context. We will continue to highlight visitor favorites, but also include less familiar works. These historic paintings and drawings will be presented alongside more contemporary works of art as a way to highlight issues and themes facing early Americans that are still relevant today. The juxtaposition of old and new is intended to illustrate how the American identity has changed over time.

The mansion’s Southern Gallery – located on the top floor – represents the first of these gallery changes. Originally, the gallery housed Southern portraiture and landscape painting from 1810-1880 and explored how art played an important role in establishing a regional identity. Recently, the gallery was reexamined to explore the U.S. Civil War era and to delve further into the issue of race in America – a theme that is still relevant today. The gallery has reopened with the addition of “Southern Souvenir No. II,” c. 1948 by Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015), a loan from Art Bridges, a new non-profit foundation focused on sharing outstanding works of American art.

Cortor is an African American artist known for his serene paintings of strong, elongated black women, but in ‘Southern Souvenir No. II” he positions disembodied figures amongst historic representations and classical imagery to signify the legacy of race in the American South. Although Cortor’s painting is a more contemporary work than others in the mansion, it serves as a powerful comparison to the historic paintings. With the inclusion of “Southern Souvenir No. II,” visitors now have the opportunity to reexamine the historic context of the paintings dating around the time of the U.S. Civil War, while questioning the idea of race in America then and now.

Committed to collecting, studying and presenting significant American art to connect people of every background to creativity, knowledge and ideas, we hope these galleries will prompt a dialogue about the complexity of the American experience and reflect how the American identity may or may not have changed over the centuries.
​

Keep an eye out for additional gallery changes in the coming year.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Article Categories

    All
    Arts
    Business
    Chattanooga
    Church
    Education
    Educational
    Family Friendly
    Festival
    Food
    Fundraiser
    Garden Club
    Government
    History
    Holidays
    Jobs
    Lookout Mountain
    Nonprofit
    Outdoors
    Riverview
    Shopping
    Sports


    Archives

    January 2023
    September 2022
    July 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015

    RSS Feed

Stay up-to-date

Join our email list today for the latest news and events between issues!

Contact US

Mailing address: P.O. Box 99 Lookout Mountain, TN 37350
Physical address: 112 N. Watauga, Lookout Mountain, TN 37350
p. (423) 822-6397
Visit our sister paper: Signal Mountain Mirror

Stay Connected