COLUMBUS, GEORGIA.- As the Columbus Museum’s 50th Anniversary year draws to a close, the Columbus Museum Uptown will focus its attention on an artist who played an important role in the life of Columbus and the history of the Columbus Museum. Drawn entirely from the collection of the Columbus Museum and local donors, the exhibition The Portraits and Landscapes of A. Henry Nordhausen, on view from December 11, 2003 until March 13, 2004, looks at the evolution of August Henry Nordhausen’s career and his connection to the city of Columbus.
August Henry Nordhausen was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1901, the youngest child of Henry and Katherine Nordhausen who had emigrated from Germany in the late 1880s. After high school Nordhausen spent two years at the New York School of Fine Arts before venturing to Europe in 1922. In Europe he found a number of educational opportunities available to him, and for two and a half years he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Munich with Hugo Von Habermann and Hans Hofmann. Upon returning to the United States, Nordhausen persisted with his vocation in the arts through commercial work and teaching, never forgetting his own academic training. Throughout his career, he continually entered competitions at the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and won prizes in many juried exhibitions.
After he served in the military during World War II, the GI Bill enabled Nordhausen to receive additional artistic training at the New School for Social Research in New York. By the 1950s he was able to travel extensively due to increased sales of his paintings and the receipt of many portrait commissions. He traveled to Italy, Greece and Scandinavia before finding his way to Columbus, Georgia. For Nordhausen, Georgia became an area where he received many portrait commissions. As a result, he established a studio in Columbus in 1960 and eventually settled in this community. The people of Columbus appreciated his talent and acknowledged the benefit of such an artist’s presence in a small southern city. Before his death in 1993, Nordhausen’s work was featured in several one-man exhibitions at the Columbus Museum. This exhibition is made possible by generous funding from Mrs. Frank D. Foley, Jr.
