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Open and Shut

Today marks the closing and opening of two of our traveling exhibitions.

This is your last chance to see Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum at the the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Whiteface Mountain from Lake Placid by Sanford Robinson Gifford is one of more than fifty artworks set to pack up after today.

Gifford has painted a shrine to the unspoiled landscape of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. Mirrored in the lake's pristine waters, majestic Whiteface Mountain seems to cast a hypnotic hold on daily activities. The languidly drifting rowboat enhances the sense of serenity. By the mid-1860s, preserving the wilderness was a pressing concern for ardent conservationists and Gifford used his artistic skill to aid in these efforts.

Coincidentally, American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens today at the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts, and continues through April 14, 2002.

Pictured: Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1823–1880, Whiteface Mountain from Lake Placid, 1866, oil, 11 5/8 x 19 5/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Johnson Garrett.