On April 7, the Addison Gallery of American Art will host The Lunder Institute, a collaborative project bringing together six renowned art institutions across the country to explore the evolving state of American art. The upcoming symposium, led by the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art, showcases a range of perspectives, including presentations from Addison curators Gordon Wilkins and Rachel Vogel, and two panels featuring history professor Hardeep Dillon from the University of Pennsylvania and art history professor Andrew McClellan from Tufts University, as well as Puerto Rican artist Miguel Luciano, indigenous art curator for the MFA Boston Marina Declineco, and curator Stephanie Sparling Williams from the Brooklyn Museum. Also included in the event are several student presentations, highlighting contemporary experiences with American art.
In an effort to redefine American art more inclusively, the organizers conducted a survey of over 20 other museums that showcased American art. Their findings revealed a shift away from strict citizenship criteria and towards a broader interpretation of American identity. Overcoming logistical challenges through collaborative problem-solving, the event aims to spark critical conversations about the representation and definition of American art.
Rachel Vogel, Assistant Curator at the Addison Gallery of American Art and organizer of the Lunder Institute at the Addison, highlighted the push to broaden the definition of American art, and notes that the current attitudes of reevaluation present valuable opportunities to explore historically overlooked and underrepresented artistic realms.
“There is much more of a push to what are called hemispheric approaches to American art. Rather than [American Art] being the art of the United States, it being the Americas, plural, and the entire American hemisphere…We’re in a moment of reappraisal and reassessment of what we think American art can be. And I think that’s a really great opportunity for encouraging discoveries [and] research into these pockets of artistic production that maybe haven’t been well represented in textbooks and museums,” said Vogel.
The Addison’s terms of trust, written in the 1930s by its founder Thomas Cochran, state that the museum can only acquire artworks by native or naturalized citizens of the United States. The Addison is the only American Art museum that uses citizenship as the specific criteria for defining American Art. Vogel hopes that the Lunder Institute’s visit to the Addison Gallery of American Art can bring forth crucial conversations on redefining American Art.
“I do hope that this conference is maybe the first step for us [to] really evaluate our future in terms of thinking, ‘What steps can we take within the existing framework of the terms of trust?
And, what can we envision, in the future of this institution? Is it viable or possible that we might consider down the road, thinking about what our legacy for this institution is, and how…we define American art.” said Vogel.
However, many art museums define American art differently from the Addison. Rather than citizenship, their criteria include artists who have engaged with the American experience, whether through their residence and occupation, or their study and exploration of art. This broader perspective acknowledges the globalized art world and fosters diverse narratives within American art.
Vogel explained, “Most of the museums still define American art as art of the United States, but rather than that being limited to artists to were either born here or officially went through the naturalization process, more typically, these museums define it as artists that had significant connection to this country, who studied and lived and worked here for an extended period of time, or artists who reflected in their work, the idea of the American experience… I think having a definition that thinks about what artists are contributing to our national cultural legacy, or tradition, rather than defining it by citizenship might allow for more types of experiences, more types of narratives, to be reflected in the American art historical canon.”
Vogel hopes that the Lunder Institute will leave visitors with a lasting impression, and provoke questions and conversations about American art that remain relevant outside of the Addison.
“I hope that there’s at least one or two takeaways that stays with them, and maybe comes to mind the next time that they’re in a museum, or the next time that they are learning more about American art… I also hope that this is the beginning of conversations that continue, both within the Addison and within the sort of broader world,” said Vogel.
