National Academy Museum Reopens with Six Stellar Shows

The six-story 1902 Beaux arts townhouse on New York's Fifth Avenue that is home to the National Academy Museum and School reopened last weekend with six new shows, an array of art classes, and a fresh look after a $3.5 million renovation.

The museum closed to renovate in July of 2010 after sanctions were imposed on the 186-year-old institution. A censure from the Association of Art Museum Directors had resulted from the museum's $13.5 million sale of two Hudson River School paintings.

The de-accessions brought in much-needed cash, but left the museum under painful restrictions limiting loans and exhibitions. While sanctions have been lifted, the museum is under probation until 2014.

Visitors now can enjoy redesigned public spaces, including the names of Academicians at the entryway.

Among the current offerings, is Will Barnet at 100, the first New York museum retrospective of the influential centenarian  artist and instructor.

The centerpiece of the exhibitions is An American Collection, the first rotation of a salon-style installation of approximately 100 works from the museum’s collections of over 7,000 works of art and architecture. Highlights of the exhibition include works by Asher B. Durand, William Merritt Chase, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Reginald Marsh, and Richard Estes.

In a separate installation, The Artist Revealed: A Panorama of Great Artist Portraits, the Academy presents highlights from its extensive collection of over 1,000 portraits from the early 19th century to today.  The collection comprises one of the largest and most important holdings of portraits in the United States.  On view are Thomas Eakins’s only fully realized self portrait, from 1902, and works by contemporary artists Jacob Lawrence (1977), Wayne Thiebaud (1985), Chuck Close, and Susanna Coffey (1994). 

Parabolas to Post-Modern: Selections of Post-War Architecture from the Academy’s Collection showcases post-war architecture. The development of four artists and one architect are illuminated in National Academicians: Then and Now.

Finally, Contemporary Selections: Aligning Abstraction, focuses on abstract paintings in the work of five recent Academicians: Bill Jensen (Luohan XI (Breath), 2005), Harriet Korman (Untitled, 2005), Melissa Meyer (A Garden for Edith, 2010), Judith Murray (Celebration, 2007), and Stephen Westfall, whose Canon (2002) is a significant transitional painting for the artist, who is best known for his colorful "broken grid" paintings.

A modest 20% increase in attendance, which reportedly was only about 20,000 annually, is hoped for by museum director Carmine Branagan.