Collection of important American paintings spends the winter in Asheville
The history of art in America tends to focus on the prolific mid-twentieth century, on Expressionism and its offspring, and on the rise of New York as the art capital of the world. Frequently left out of the narrative are the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when painters and sculptors documented the natural beauty of an expanding nation, its notable people and growing population.
Now, art lovers can enrich their frame of reference with American Made, a visiting exhibit from The Mint Museum in Charlotte, selected from the works of the Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen PhD Foundation. Co-curated by the Mint’s President Todd Herman, PhD, the Museum’s senior curator of American art Jonathan Stuhlman, PhD, and Kevin Sharp, director of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, the show brings together more than two centuries of American works, on display at Asheville Art Museum through February 10.
On view are pieces by notables such as the eighteenth century’s Benjamin West and Thomas Sully; the nineteenth century’s Thomas Cole, whose famous The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts after a Thunderstorm) appears in the show; fellow landscape painter Asher Durand; and pieces by American artists who worked both home and abroad, including John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and Childe Hassam. This brings the timeline into the early twentieth century, toward early modernists such as Winslow Homer.
Ambitious art lovers have been able to see such works piecemeal by traveling to New York, Houston, Washington, and St. Louis, among other cities; but this is the first time so many pieces from the DeMell Jacobsen collection have been gathered under one roof. The collection represents a lifetime project of Diane DeMell Jacobsen, who first saw Cole’s Oxbow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when she was a child. Beyond its natural beauty, the landscape is famous for its symbology, suggesting America’s transition from wilderness into tamer, settled land.
“Growing up, my mom would ask us what we might like to do on school breaks and holidays,” she writes in the exhibition’s catalog. Her sister always chose an outing to the Metropolitan. “I never imagined that someday I would actually be able to purchase a portrait of George Washington or a painting by Thomas Cole.”
Her purchasing power was partly due to Jacobsen’s longtime position working for the chairman of IBM. The extensive travel the job entailed meant the opportunity to visit some of the world’s great museum collections. A deeper appreciation of American art came when she joined a friend as part of a group of collectors that visited auction houses and art fairs, during which she learned the difference between decorative art and true masterpieces.
“My definition of a masterpiece,” she writes, “is that it takes your breath away and keeps giving you more — different emotions and insights the longer you observe it.” Visitors will have that very opportunity at the local show, which includes still lifes and genre scenes in addition to landscapes, portraits, and sculpture.
And what might be Jacobsen’s favorite in the collection? “I love them all,” she once said, “the way you most likely love your children.”
American Made: Paintings and Sculptures From the DeMell Jacobsen Collection, curated by The Mint Museum in Charlotte, is on view at Asheville Art Museum (2 Pack Square downtown) through Monday, Feb. 10. Visit ashevilleart.org for more information.