Moving Out

Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum is on the move!

Tomorrow is your last chance to view our traveling exhibition at the Middlebury College Museum of Art in Middlebury, Vermont, before it heads for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Young America features more than fifty artworks that trace the transformation of the colonies into nationhood. Volterra, by Elihu Vedder, is an example of many landscape paintings included in this exhibition.

This extraordinary rock formation is located in Volterra in Italy, site of an ancient Etruscan town. The white limestone cliffs are famous as a source of alabaster, a soft translucent mineral used for carving sculpture and decorative objects. In recalling his visits to the site, Elihu Vedder wrote, “On one side of town there is a great ravine, and the hillside has been crumbling away for centuries, they think there is a subterranean river under it.”

Source: Gwen Everett. Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Elihu Vedder, 1836 USA–1923 Italy, Volterra, 1860, oil on canvas mounted on canvas, 12 1/4 x 25 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.