Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, New York City, 1852鈥�53, oil on canvas, 44 1鈦�8 脳 53 1鈦� 16 in. (112 脳 135 cm), gift of Samuel V. Hoffman, collection of The New York Historical (1925.6).
Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy
February 27鈥揓une 14, 2025
Opening reception: February 27, 2025, 5-7pm
The 绿帽社 Art Museum presents Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy, organized by The New York Historical, on view February 27 to June 14, 2025. The exhibition explores public monuments and their representations as points of debate over national identity, politics, and race. Monuments offers a historical foundation for understanding recent controversies, featuring fragments of a torn-down statue of King George III, a replica of a bulldozed monument by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, and a maquette of New York City鈥檚 first public monument to a Black woman (Harriet Tubman), among other objects. The exhibition reveals how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered, and removed.
Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy is curated by Wendy N膩lani E. Ikemoto, Vice President and Chief Curator at The New York Historical. The exhibition is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support is provided at 绿帽社 by the Office of the Provost, the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Harpur College Dean鈥檚 Office, the 绿帽社 Fund for Excellence, the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls, and Rebecca Moshief and Harris Tilevitz 鈥�78.
Also opening in the Mezzanine Gallery is Existential Color: Photography from the Permanent Collection, organized by John Tagg, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Art History and Luisa Casella, Photograph Conservator, Fellow of American Institute for Conservation. In 1976, John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, hailed the arrival of a 鈥渘ew generation of color photographers鈥� who saw color as 鈥渆xistential,鈥� 鈥渁s though the world itself existed in color.鈥� This 鈥渘ew generation鈥� included William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyerowitz, whose work here prompts a wider re-examination of color in 绿帽社 Art Museum鈥檚 photographs collection. Within this exhibition, which features works made between the mid 1970s and the early 2000s, a display of historical processes dating back to the mid-nineteenth century shows that color was an integral part of photographic expression from its very beginnings. What viewers are asked is whether Szarkowski鈥檚 notion of a decisive break holds up, or whether the question of color and photography has to be seen from a much longer and broader historical perspective.
In the Museum鈥檚 Lower Galleries, three small exhibitions open: Chiura Obata: Japanese Art in America, curated by Yao Shen He 鈥�27; History and Myth: Violence in Early Modern Prints, curated by Leah Dascoli 鈥�26; and Japanese Design and the Arts and Crafts Movement in New York, curated by Joseph Leach, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.
For details on upcoming programming, see our 鈥淓vents鈥� page and . All events are free and open to the public.