Mia landscape exhibit asks viewers to see world's beauty with fresh eyes
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"Seeing Nature," a collection of landscape paintings by some of the world's greatest artists, opens this weekend at Mia. The show invites viewers to see the world's beauty with new eyes.
Minneapolis Institute of Art curator Rachel McGarry says the exhibit — curated from the private collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen — spans four centuries, and examines how landscape painting has changed over time.
"Landscape painting is really about an artist going out into nature and looking at the world around them and recording that on a canvas or a panel," McGarry said.
While each of the 39 paintings in the show is remarkable, McGarry said, what makes this special is the collection as a whole. There are five of Claude Monet's paintings in the collection, plus works from J.M.W. Turner, Paul Cezanne, Maxfield Parrish and Gerhard Richter.
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The works range from cityscapes along rivers in London and Venice to the power of volcanoes.
Georgia O'Keeffe's study of a black iris hangs not far from a richly detailed birch forest by Gustav Klimt. "Klimt is not traditionally known as a landscape painter but he is a wonderful landscape painter and such an extraordinary artist," McGarry said. "It's very difficult to see Klimt in the United States — you have to travel to New York basically to see Klimt paintings."
In another gallery hang three different paintings of the Grand Canyon, offering perspectives ranging from the late 19th century to 1998.
Art historian Sir Kenneth Clark once said, "We owe much of our pleasure in looking at the world to the great artists who have looked at it before us."
McGarry said she loves that idea, because even though she's never been to the Grand Canyon, she knows what it's going to look like from works of artists like Thomas Moran, David Hockney, Arthur Wesley Dow, all of whom are featured in the show. "I know that when I go to the Grand Canyon, I'll see the Grand Canyon through their eyes."
Landscapes are essentially an artists' view of a particular place or time, McGarry said, and artists have the power to change how we see the world.
"I find that I go home in the evening after we've been installing the show, and I'm looking at the landscape differently," she said. "I'm looking at the way the light falls on the leaves, or on the other night when there was this huge sort of apocalyptic storm with this incredible sunset — my eyes were sort of sensitized to really look and appreciate the magical quality of our own landscape."
While the exhibition is traveling to five U.S. cities, Mia has put its own twist on the show by adding soundscapes to accompany some of the paintings. "Lake Light," by April Gornik, is an invented landscape of an African rainstorm, accompanied by the sound of rain pouring down.
"We thought, listening, imagining what it would be like to hear these spaces would be just another way to immerse you in the landscape and give you time to take it in," McGarry said.
"Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection" opens Sunday and runs through Sept. 18 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art
