Everything Has a Story: Reflections on the Collection

June 20, 2025—ongoing

Focused on American art and historical objects from the nineteenth century to present day, the HRM’s collection holds countless compelling narratives from many viewpoints and different lived experiences.

Anna Walinska (American, b. England, 1906–1997). Self-Portrait: Flamenco, 1939. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Rosina Rubin, 2020 (2020.12). © Atelier Anna Walinska.

One of the most powerful aspects of art is its potential to inspire stories—whether through a narrative depicted by an artist, a history behind the making of a work, or a memory or imagined truth it evokes in the viewer. This presentation of the Museum’s collection uses the framework of storytelling to interpret more than forty works from all corners of our holdings.

Focused on American art and historical objects from the nineteenth century to present day, the HRM’s collection holds countless compelling narratives from many viewpoints and different lived experiences. In Everything Has a Story: Reflections on the Collection, you will discover enduring highlights in conversation with recent acquisitions, hidden gems, and important loans, which will rotate periodically. Some artworks reveal stories very personal to the artist. After seeing flamenco dancer Nunez de Polanco perform, Anna Walinska offered to paint his portrait in exchange for lessons. She found herself dancing with him onstage at a benefit concert, which she commemorated in the painting Self-Portrait: Flamenco. In The Curvey, Winfred Rembert reached deep into childhood memories, past teenage experience of racism and violence, to recall the simple joy of swimming with friends in a rural Georgia river. Mark O’Banks’ dollhouse Nybylwyck Hall is the stage set for a dramatic tale of intrigue and elopement. And Paul Manship’s fleet-footed Diana gains additional meaning considered in the context of American women’s increased participation in sports in the early twentieth century.

So, would you like to hear a good story? From paintings and sculpture to costumes and baseball cards, our collections and these artists, past and present, bring their own perspective on our history and our outlook for the future, and we are proud to share them.

 

Select works in this exhibition are generously lent by Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, as part of the Art Bridges’ Collection Loan Partnership initiative and also by Art Bridges.

Exhibitions are made possible by assistance provided by the County of Westchester.

 

Featured Artists

Gifford Beal • Elizabeth Wilson Beals • Oscar Carlson • Joseph Cornell • Jasper Francis Cropsey • Julian O. Davidson • Alice M. Dunstan • Erika Harrsch Winslow Homer• Anna Hyatt Huntington • George InnessTitus Tyrone Kaphar Daniel Ridgway Knight • William McCloskey • Catherine Latson • Paul Manship • Henri Matisse • Richard Mayhew • Barbara Morgan • Mark O’Banks • Georgia O’Keeffe • Fairfield Porter • Hiram Powers • Winfred Rembert • Frederic Remington • John W. Rhoden • Severin Roesen • George SegalSylvia SleighMickalene Thomas • Rigoberto Torres • Anna WalinskaAndy WarholGeorge Wright • Robert Zakanitch