Southwest Adventures

A new exhibition at New Mexico Museum of Art explores the work of pioneering modernist Marsden Hartley

- John O'Hern

Sundown, Kezar Lake, July 14, 1910. Oil on panel, 5% x 9% in. Bates College Museum of Art, Marsden Hartley Melmorial Collection. Gift of Norma Berger, 1955.1.101.

Through July 25, 2025
Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts
New Mexico Museum of Art 107 W. Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 t: [phone]
www.nmartmuseum.org

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was born in Maine and became a peripatetic painter, traveling the world, moving in the circles of the international avant-garde, but regularly returning to Maine.

The exhibition Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts was developed by the Vilcek Foundation in collaboration with the Bates College Museum of Art's Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection. It is on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe through July 25.

The museum notes, "Artworks from the Vilcek and Bates collections will be exhibited alongside a selection of Hartley's personal effects—mementos from his travels, snapshots, and keepsakes. The remarkable assemblage adds intimacy and depth, as well as a deeper understanding of his art, life, and wanderlust. The exhibition also features three important paintings by Hartley in the collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art."

Hartley received a scholarship to study at the Cleveland Museum of Art which, in turn, awarded him a stipend to study for five years in New York. In 1889 to 1890 he studied with William Merritt Chase at the New York School of Art and later studied at the National Academy of Design from 1900 to 1904. He also came under the influence of avant-garde artists from Europe, notably Cézanne, whose work was becoming known there.