The Hyde Collection’s 60th Anniversary Celebration Brings Bolton Landing Sculptor Back Home

GLENS FALLS, NY – In honor of its sixtieth anniversary, the Hyde Collection is pleased to announce the exhibition Songs of the Horizon: David Smith, Music, and Dance. Curated by Dr. Jennifer Field, Executive Director of the Estate of David Smith, this is the first museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the indelible influence of music and dance on Smith’s work in painting, drawing, and sculpture. The exhibition features thirty-five pieces loaned by 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, in addition to archival materials from the Estate and works from the Hyde’s permanent collection. The Hyde aims to draw scholars, collectors, and enthusiasts to celebrate Smith’s legacy as well as the enduring traditions of dance and music in the southern Adirondack region. 

David Smith (1906-1965; b. Decatur, IN) is recognized as one of the great sculptors of the twentieth century. Smith began spending summers in Bolton Landing, New York, in the late 1920s and settled there permanently in 1940. “The Adirondack region that encompasses Bolton Landing and Glens Falls was inseparable from Smith’s artistic practice,” says Field. “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 performances in the region and in New York City, Smith initiated an exploration of dancers and musicians rapt in song. 

Jason Ward, Hyde Collection Board of Trustees Chair, notes, “As part of his commitment to the area, Smith became deeply involved with the foundation of The Hyde Collection before his premature death in 1965. Charlotte Hyde, the founder of the Museum, was a friend of David Smith and fond of his artistic creations. David Smith was one of the Collection’s earliest trustees and 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 that poetically evokes the essence of music, dance, and nature. This intimate association with David Smith,” Ward continues, “is what the museum seeks to highlight with this anniversary exhibition.” 

In 1926, Smith moved from the Midwest to New York City. There he met artist Dorothy Dehner; they married the following year. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Smith photographed Dehner in dance poses. These images, along with photographs by Barbara Morgan of Martha Graham, spurred Smith’s sustained study of the female figure in motion. Songs of the Horizon features Smith’s sculpture Boaz Dancing School (1945; Private collection)—a stylistically radical interpretation of Franziska Boaz’s Bolton Landing dance studio, and a rare example of Smith explicitly referencing a particular historical and autobiographical moment. This sculpture has been publicly displayed only once since 1947.

Smith cited music as essential to his life and work, particularly classical and jazz from his radio: “I use  music as company in the manual labor part of sculpture, of which there is much.” He regularly traveled to New York City to attend concerts and jazz clubs. Locally, he enjoyed the lively summer concert season in Lake George. A trio of drawings depicts a 1946 performance by harpsichordist Sylvia Marlow, reunited here for the first time. These works in turn, engendered an ambitious group of drawings, paintings and sculpture inspired by the two ancient Greek muses of music and dance, represented here by the innovative, abstract sculptures Euterpe and Terpsichore (1946; the Estate of David Smith) and  Terpsichore and Euterpe (1947; Harvard Art Museums). 

Concurrently, Smith created a series centered on renowned cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, who briefly settled in the Adirondacks in the 1940s. Smith captured the psychological intensity and geometry of the cellist and his instrument in a painting series and in the sculpture Cello Player (1945; Private collection). These works, reunited in the exhibition for the first time in nearly 20 years, are accomplished examples of the  complex, abstract direction in which Smith took his paintings and sculptures in the mid-1940s.  

Of this exhibition, David Smith’s daughters, Rebecca and Candida Smith, state: 

“We are thrilled to see our father’s work back at the Hyde Collection. Our father wanted his sculptures to be experienced in relation to nature, to changing light, weather, and seasons. He always said that an artist is a person of their time. There was a vibrant community of artists and performers in the southern  Adirondacks, and our father’s work responded to contemporaneous performing arts and music and was inspired by the wild beauty of the mountains and the lakes.”  

– Rebecca and Candida Smith 

Additional Information Regarding David Smith 

David Smith married artist Dorothy Dehner in 1927. Dehner encouraged Smith to enroll at the Art Students League and introduced him to modern dance. In acknowledgment of the vital role Dehner played in Smith’s early career and his life in the Adirondacks, Songs of the Horizon: David Smith, Music, and  Dance include a selection of artworks by Dehner. She left the marriage in 1950, returning to New York City. Smith’s works became increasingly large and inventive, his sculptures spreading into the fields of his mountain home. 

Accompanying Educational Program Offerings 

• June 24, 11 AM: Exhibition Tour with Guest Curator Jennifer Field 
• June 24, 4 PM: Conversation with the Daughters of David Smith 
• July 2, 6:30 PM: The Sculptor and the Musician: European Baroque Chamber Music
• July 20, 5:30-7:30 PM: Adult Workshop: Modern Dance with Ginny Martin & Dana Yager
• July 22, 7:30 PM: “A Tribute to David Smith” with Hub New Music 
• July 25, 27 & August 1, 3, 10-11:15 AM: Youth Workshop: Earth Movement with Ellen Sinopoli  Dance Company 
• July 27 & 28, 12-4 PM: Youth Workshop: Modern Dance with Ginny Martin & Dana Yager
• July 28, 5:30 PM: Performance: Modern Dance with Ginny Martin & Dana Yager
• August 6, 10 AM-5 PM: Community Day  
• August 17, 6 PM: Lecture: David Smith, Music, Dance and Community with Paula Wisotzki
• September 8-10, 9 AM-4 PM: Welding Workshop with Salem Art Works: Inspired by David Smith

Thank You to Our Sponsors 

Special thank you to: The Charles R. Wood Foundation and The Hoopes Family Foundation  

Leading Sponsors: The Glens Falls Foundation, Anne and George Morris, Francine and Robert Nemer, Franklin and Mary Renz, Charnell H. Thompson, and Jason C. Ward and Heather M. Ward 

Major Sponsors: Mr. Mark Behan, Tenée and James Casaccio, The Chateau On The Lake, Ellen-Deane Cummins, D.A. Collins, Carl and Terry DeBrule, Tom and Sally Hoy, The Robert Lehman Foundation,  J.M. McDonald Foundation, and Wilmington Trust 

Supporting Sponsors: India and Benjamin Adams, Atherton Painting & Renovations, Giorgio and  Maureen DeRosa, KEENA Staffing Inc., Mrs. Joan Lapham, Mr. John J. Nigro, Dennis J. Phillips and Patricia Smith Phillips, The Queensbury Hotel, Chelsea and Joshua Silver, StoredTech IT Consulting,  Sarah Parker Ward and Chris Ward, Warren County Bar Association, and Domenique and Dmitriy Yermolayev 

A SECOND EXHIBITION OPENING 

The 1960s: Beyond Op and Pop 

The 1960s are understood as the dawn of widespread progressive social views, from the civil rights movement to war protests and the sexual revolution. The visual arts as well experienced the advent of radical styles, including Op Art, Pop Art, and countless new approaches to what it meant to work abstractly. 

Notwithstanding the allure of novelty, not all artists shunned the “real world”—and the sixties also saw the development of the painting style known as Photorealism. The 1960s: Beyond Op and Pop draws from The Hyde’s permanent collection of 1960s painting, sculpture, and works on paper in a wide range  of styles.  

About David Smith 

Widely regarded as one of the most innovative sculptors of his generation, David Smith (1906-1965) was pioneering in his ability to fuse Surrealist and Cubist influences, redefining what sculpture could be for the modern world. David Smith’s sculptures, paintings, and drawings have been exhibited internationally since the 1950s. Smith represented the United States at La Biennale di Venezia in 1954 and 1958.  Numerous solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted in the decades since, including at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1965, 2011), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1969,  2006); the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1982); Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan (1994);  MNCA, Reina Sofia, Madrid (1996); Tate Modern, London (2006); Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY (1997-99, 2017), and Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2019-20), among many other venues.

About The Hyde Collection 

The Hyde is one of the Northeast’s exceptional small art museums with distinguished European and  American art collections. The core collection, acquired by Museum founders Louis and Charlotte Hyde,  includes works by such artists as Sandro Botticelli, El Greco, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and American artists Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, and James McNeill Whistler. The Museum’s Modern and  Contemporary art collection features works by artists including Josef Albers, Dorothy Dehner, Sam Gilliam, Adolph Gottlieb, Grace Hartigan, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, George McNeil, Robert Motherwell, Ben Nicholson, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bridget Riley. Today, The Hyde offers significant national and international exhibitions and a packed schedule of events that help visitors experience art in new ways. Visit www.hydecollection.org.