KANSAS CITY, MO.-Reflecting research and scholarship collected over the span of more than twenty years, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 will be published by the Museum and the University of Washington Press on June 1, 2007. Coinciding with the opening of the Nelson-Atkins’ new campus expansion, the production of this two-volume catalogue represents another of the Museum’s major initiatives to increase the impact of its world-class collections through accessibility for both public and scholarly communities. To celebrate this occasion, the Museum will also present Building a Legacy: Collecting American Paintings for Kansas City – A Symposium in Honor of Crosby and Bebe Kemper, a one-day symposium on October 20 gathering experts in the field to speak about selected artists and works in the collection.

The American paintings catalogue is the fourth and most extensive in a series of Nelson-Atkins collection catalogues. Following the institutional belief that high-level, original research and good public stewardship go hand in hand, the catalogue’s first volume brings together full-page, color images of 125 key works in the collection with essays by Nelson-Atkins curatorial staff and other noted American art specialists. The second volume further supplements this with color images and carefully researched exhibition histories, references, provenance and technical descriptions for all of the 266 paintings in the collection. Launched in 1985 by the previous American Art Curator Dr. Henry Adams, the project has been spearheaded by Dr. Margaret C. Conrads, Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art, who took over the department in 1994.

“Living with these works and weaving together their stories has been an immeasurable pleasure. By opening the pages of history, we’ve uncovered hidden intrigues, synthesized existing scholarship and resolved speculation on a number of important works from this country’s artistic past,” said Conrads, who was a primary author and also edited the catalogue. “By presenting these discoveries in a beautiful and accessible way, we hope that we can share this joy with a broad range of people, from the art-loving public, students of all ages, and visitors to the Nelson-Atkins, to professors, curators and researchers around the world.”

The Catalogue - Totaling over 800 pages between two volumes, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 is a comprehensive resource on the collection and its history. In the first volume, essays individually profile over one hundred stand-out works while incorporating biographical information on the artist. Following a cross-disciplinary approach to art history, the entries are centered around the physical object but expand outward to ensure that the discussion of each painting illuminates the history and context of its making, exploring the customs, perceptions, social influences and ideas of the time. While this effort took advantage of past research and newly available digital archives, it also incorporated close technical study of each painting and field work in which researchers talked to artists’ and subjects’ families, tracked down lost documents and involved scholars from a wide range of disciplines to build their cases. This combination of object-study and investigation into the artists’ lives and times in turn allows readers to gain a fuller understanding of both well and lesser-known artist’s work.

American painting has been an important focus for the Nelson-Atkins since it began building the Museum’s collection prior to opening in 1933. The collection includes numerous major works each by George Wesley Bellows, George Caleb Bingham, Albert Bloch, William Merritt Chase, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, De Scott Evans, Marsden Hartley, Martin Johnson Heade, George Inness, John Frederick Kensett, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Moran, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Frederic Remington, John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart, and Benjamin West. Following a major bequest upon the death of Thomas Hart Benton in 1975, the Nelson-Atkins also became the undisputed center for works by this pioneer Regionalist, notably acquiring ten panels from the series American Historical Epic. Important representative paintings by American masters such as George Ault, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, John Steuart Curry, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Asher B. Durand, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Willson Peale and Raphaelle Peale, Charles Sheeler, and Max Weber round-out the collection, ensuring a full-sweep of the developments of American painting. Publication of The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 gives the Museum an opportunity to disseminate knowledge of this truly distinguished, and often under-recognized, American collection.

The publication also demonstrates the priority given to scholarship as part of the Nelson-Atkins’ stewardship of the collection. Led by Conrads, a team of curatorial staff members, conservators and outside experts tackled the mysteries of each painting, using technology like infrared reflectography and material analysis to uncover the painter’s process, and traditional sleuthing into a wide variety of archives to advance the understanding of the work’s history. An example of how these two efforts came together can be seen in the entries on George Caleb Bingham’s Dr. Benoist Troost (c.1859) and Mrs. Benoist Troost (c.1859). Using infrared reflectography, the team observed that the wife’s portrait had extensive under-drawings while the doctor’s portrait had only the faintest pencil marks, suggesting the first was most likely done from a live model while the second was likely based on a photograph. Combining this information with Bingham’s travel schedule, Conrads realized that the doctor’s portrait was probably painted posthumously. At the same time, period costume research revealed that his wife is dressed in mourning clothes, leading to the understanding that both works must have been completed after his death. The emerging use of photography by painters at this time encouraged Conrads to look for other instances of their use. Following a hunch that Bingham’s later portrait Roma Johnson Wornall (c.1867-74) might also have been painted from a photograph, Conrads reached out to Mrs. Wornall’s descendents, which led to the unearthing of a long forgotten box with the very photograph used by Bingham nearly 150 years before.

Other works were revealed by x-ray to have entirely different scenes underneath the top painting, including George Wesley Bellows’ Frankie, the Organ Boy (1907), which has a study for a female nude beneath the polite portrait of the titular youth, and George Fuller’s Hannah (1879), which has at least one landscape below the surface. Layering works was part of Fuller’s technique, and he felt it gave the final portrait greater depth, as can be noted in the misty, shadowed rendering of this sober, young woman. Deciphering the faintest trace of an inscription, and comparing notes with a New Jersey historian, the Nelson-Atkins’ team was also able to identify the Reginald Marsh painting formerly known as Street Scene,Twelfth Avenue as actually Pavonia—Jersey City (1928), clarifying the work’s history and the history of the metropolis it depicts.

The Symposium - To share these stories and more, the Museum will host Building a Legacy: Collecting American Paintings for Kansas City - A Symposium in Honor of Crosby and Bebe Kemper on October 20.