What’s Next at The Hyde Museum?.. The Exhibition Tour, Songs of the Horizon

Beginning on June 24th, in honor of the Hyde Collection’s 60th anniversary, the museum will be featuring an exhibition focused on the influence of music and dance on David Smith’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures. This exhibition features works of art from both the private and public collection, and the Estate of David Smith, in addition to a selection of rare archival materials!

This exhibition – curated by Dr. Jennifer Field, Executive Director of The Estate of David Smith – is organized to commemorate The Hyde Collection’s 60th anniversary as a public museum. It features approximately thirty loans from major private and public collections, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Harvard Art Museums, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Estate of David Smith; along with a selection of archival materials from the Estate, and works from The Hyde’s permanent collection.

David Smith (1906-1965) settled permanently in Bolton Landing, New York, in 1940, with the artist Dorothy Dehner. The Adirondack region that encompasses Bolton Landing and Glens Falls became inseparable from Smith’s artistic practice… A dialogue with nature – the mountain landscape, the change of seasons, the flight of birds – is reflected in his artwork in every medium. In the 1940s, inspired by modern dance and concerts held both locally and in New York City, he made inventive works of art that depict dancing figures and musicians playing instruments. Music was intrinsic to Smith’s life and work: “I use the music as company in the manual labor part of a sculpture,” he later explained.

As part of Smith’s commitment to the area, he became deeply involved with the foundation of The Hyde Collection prior to his death in 1965… Mrs. Charlotte Hyde, founder of the Museum, was a friend of David Smith. There were very close bonds between the sculptor and Mrs. Hyde’s curators – Otto Wittman and Jerry Dodge – as well as her longtime friend and Chair of her trustees, artist and experimental filmmaker Douglass Crockwell. Smith was one of the Collection’s earliest trustees – he curated The Hyde’s very first summer exhibition, installing his own sculptures on the lawn. In the spirit of that inaugural event, Songs of the Horizon: David Smith, Music, and Dance will feature two graceful, vertical sculptures from later in Smith’s career… Measuring up to twelve feet tall, they poetically evoke the essence of music, dance, and nature.

This exhibition also includes a selection of works by Dorothy Dehner, in acknowledgment of the vital role she played in Smith’s early career and his life in the Adirondacks… Dehner and Smith married on Christmas Eve, 1927, and bought a farm in Bolton Landing, where they spent much of their married life. Dehner’s subject matter consisted of natural forms, such as shells and aquatic life, while her style was influenced by cubism. The couple divorced after over two decades of a tumultuous marriage… However, the twenty-three year marriage still contributed to each of the artists’ work.

For more information, please visit hydecollection.org