19th Century European and American Art, is a visually rich experience comprising eighty-plus pieces from a time period in which Western nations radically transformed from agrarian cultures to industrial ones. This big change was reflected in the era’s aesthetic development, with visual art moving from traditional to modern, as evident in this show.
“In art,” notes Angelica Daneo, the DAM’s chief curator and curator of European art before 1900, “the nineteenth century began with a craze for antiquities and ended with a march toward abstraction, a shift so groundbreaking that there is hardly anything in comparison from centuries past.” The show has been installed on the second level of the Hamilton Building, where for many years the art of the American West was on display, but which will now be a permanent home for nineteenth-century paintings and sculptures.