“A Thing Alive”: Modern Views from the Marin Collections

July 13, 2013 - September 29, 2013

Davis Gallery

Writing in 1913, John Marin declared, “a work of art is a thing alive.” He continued, “Thus the whole city is alive; buildings, people, are all alive; and the more they move me the more I feel them to be alive.”

Marin’s words guide this selection of works drawn from the John Marin Collection and the Norma B. Marin Photography Collection. The exhibition features Marin’s abstracted cityscapes and landscapes as well as photographs of urban and rural subjects by Berenice Abbott, Eugène Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, and others. Presenting exhilarating views of New York skyscrapers alongside delicate renderings of coastal Maine, A Thing Alive reflects on the bold changes that occurred in twentieth-century artistic representations of the natural and built environment.