This survey exhibition of more than sixty works traces the history of the American Autumn landscape painting, beginning with brilliantly-hued fall scenes created by Hudson River School painters such as Jasper Cropsey, Frederic Edwin Church and Thomas Cole. The exhibition continues the historical narrative of American artist’s fascination with Autumn by presenting key Autumn works of American Impressionism and Urban Realism, as well as artists who have reinvigorated contemporary landscape painting by drawing their inspiration from Autumn and the Hudson River School Painters.

Organized around four main major themes, Paintbox Leaves illustrates: the Harvest, a symbol of the fruitful domestication of the American landscape; the Visitor in the Landscape, reflecting man’s evolving relationship with nature and tourism; the Leaf and the Magic of Color, tracing artistic and scientific inquiry into the phenomena of Autumn; and Autumn Abstraction, reflecting artistic influence on the depiction of natural forms. The exhibition will include loans from major museums and private collections, in addition to works from the Hudson River Museum collection.

Paintbox Leaves: Autumnal Inspiration from Cole to Wyeth is organized by the Hudson River Museum

	Sam Gilliam (b. 1933) Fine as a Cobweb, 1989 Acrylic on canvas and primed aluminum on plywood support, 60 x 61 x 17 in.

Color and style are key elements of communication throughout the exhibition. From vibrant saturated hues that are cheerful, bold, or even harsh, to pastel watercolors that convey a coolness, light, or gossamer memories, the artwork in this show explores the process of art making. The result is a collection of works that contribute to a vocabulary of imagery relevant to the African American experience, culture, and history. Their work is autobiographical, reflective, celebratory, and seeks and creates meaning in the world of material objects.

The Chemistry of Color: The Sorgenti Collection of Contemporary African-American Art is organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Contemporary photographer Susan Wides’ fascination with the nineteenth-century Hudson River School painters is explored in From Mannahatta to Kaaterskill. The show consists of approximately 50 large-scale photographs divided into three groups: Kaaterskill (the Upper Hudson Valley), Manahatta (Scenes of Urban life), and a new group of work newly created for the Museum’s  exhibition, which shows Westchester County as a vital suburban “hinge” between the urban and the rural. From Mannahatta to Kaaterskill will examine the transformation of our natural and urban environments. The exhibition explores humanity’s intrusion into the rural landscape, and the simultaneous urge to recreate elements of nature within urban settings.

Ongoing for more than two centuries, this transformation has developed as a major theme for artists, who examine its effects on history, art, and memory. Against the surroundings of the huge remains of abandoned factories, toxic sites along the Hudson, communities transform and nature regenerates. Wides' new exploration includes historically important or iconic and contemporary landscapes, the built environment, and rural, suburban and exurban areas that define today's sprawling vistas.

Susan Wides: From Mannahatta to Kaaterskill, the City and its Surrounding Landscape is organized by the Hudson River Museum.

In the late nineteenth century, Egypt fascinated Americans as a stop on the Grand Tour. Wealthy tourists and artists, including Elihu Vedder (1836‑1923), followed in the footsteps of imperialists, explorers and archaeologists to marvel at wondrous pyramids, temples, and the desolate beauty of the desert landscape juxtaposed with the great Nile River. The Hudson River Museum’s exhibition will document Vedder’s journey along the Nile. From December 1889 to April 1890, he sailed from Cairo to Aswan, and back, as the guest of George F. Corliss, of the famous Corliss Engine Company in Providence, RI.

Elihu Vedder spent most of his career in Rome, Italy. A sensuous colorist and creator of brooding, melancholic images, he was attracted to visionary and allegorical subjects of ancient history and mythology, yet also delighted in the depiction of pure landscape. The Nile River journey reinforced his personal aesthetic, as he was able to see subjects and scenery he had depicted in some of his earliest paintings. He sent his wife Carrie impassioned descriptions of the scenery, the monuments and their effect on him, and wrote that the desolate magnificence he saw was what he had been trying to paint all along.

Elihu Vedder: Voyage on the Nileis organized by the Hudson River Museum.