Terra Collection Initiatives, developed by the Foundation’s curatorial staff in concert with institutional partners, are collaborative exhibitions and programs that further scholarship on the Foundation’s collection and make significant contributions to the study of historic American art. Collaborations vary in nature. The goal of Terra Collection Initiatives is to inspire cross-cultural dialogue on and new ways of thinking about American art, utilizing the Foundation’s collection as the basis for both scholarly interpretation and contextualized presentation.
American Artists and the Louvre
Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, 1831-1833
In an unprecedented partnership, the Musée du Louvre and the Terra Foundation for American Art co-organized American Artists and the Louvre, the first exhibition of American artists to be shown at the Louvre. Divided into two sections, the exhibition first examined the earliest generations of American artists in France, demonstrating that artistic exchange between the two countries has a long and deep history. The second section investigated the significance of the Louvre as American artists’ unofficial academy. The exhibition was accompanied by French- and English-language catalogues and a symposium at the Louvre co-organized by the two partners.
Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915
Theodore Robinson, From the Hill, Giverny, between 1889-1892
In 2007, the Musée d’Art Américain Giverny, under the auspices of the Terra Foundation for American Art, organized a major exhibition devoted to the international artists’ colony of Giverny. It was accompanied by French- and English-language catalogues and a symposium co-organized with the Musée d’Orsay.
The exhibition traveled to the San Diego Museum of American Art. A smaller version of this exhibition, Impressionist Giverny: American Painters in France, 1885-1915: Selections from the Terra Foundation for American Art, traveled to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut and the Albany Institute of History and Art in Albany, New York.
Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape
William S. Jewett, The Promised Land – The Grayson Family, 1850
Co-organized by the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with Chicago’s Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA), this exhibition traced the evolution of environmental thinking in the United States as reflected in artworks made over the course of the nation’s history. The galleries at LUMA, whose mission is to highlight the spiritual in art, are certified as “green” spaces. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue, a one-day scholarly symposium, and a series of lectures and other public programs.