America in the Making is now open at the Addison Gallery of American Art

This fall the Addison Gallery of American Art, located on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, presents America in the Making. With this exhibition, the Addison joins museums across the country in marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Filling the entire gallery space, this chronological exhibition departs from the museum's signature thematic approach to present some of the Addison’s "greatest hits" from the 18th century to the present. Revealing the extraordinary caliber of the Addison’s collection, the installation explores how art has not only reflected but also shaped, reinforced, and challenged an American society and culture that is forever “in the making.”

From colonial to contemporary art, America in the Making brings together works that reflect the aspirations and contradictions of American life. Across the exhibition, artists grapple with questions of identity and belonging, power and inequality, and tradition and change. In response to the concerns of their particular historical moments, they developed new artistic approaches, from reimagining established traditions to experimenting with new forms, materials, and techniques. Together, these works reveal how artists have continually expanded the possibilities of American art and, in doing so, helped shape—and continue to shape—how we understand America itself.

The story of American art told by this installation is by no means comprehensive, but can be read as a window into the conditions, values, and assumptions under which the Addison’s collection has been assembled and continues to grow. Its strengths and omissions reflect the circumstances of its formation, including individual taste, institutional priorities, and broader social and cultural forces. The exhibition also reflects on the history of the Addison, considering the story of its collection alongside the broader story of American art that it has helped to tell.

Allison Kemmerer, the Mary Stripp and R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art and co-curator of America in the Making, said, "Art offers a way of seeing how a society understands itself at a particular moment in time. Across American history, artists have responded to the political and social realities around them, reflecting the values and aspirations of their time while also questioning and challenging them. America in the Making brings those different moments into conversation.”

Gordon Wilkins, the Addison’s Robert M. Walker Curator of American Art added, “American art has always been bound up with the project of defining what America is—and who gets to define it. As one of the oldest museums dedicated to American art, the Addison itself has participated in that process, through the works it has collected, the artists it has championed, and the histories it has chosen to tell. America in the Making offers an opportunity to look closely at both the remarkable breadth of the collection and the perspectives that have shaped it, while considering how our understanding of American art—and America itself—continues to evolve.”

Among the 285 artists included in the exhibition are: Josef Albers, Diane Arbus, John James Audubon, Jennifer Bartlett, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Dawoud Bey, Albert Bierstadt, Mark Bradford, Alexander Calder, Frederic Church, John Singleton Copley, Stuart Davis, Roy DeCarava, Maria Oakey Dewing, Carroll Dunham, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Eakins, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Alexander Gardner, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, Sheila Hicks, Hans Hofmann, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Dorothea Lange, Roy Lichtenstein, Glenn Ligon, Sally Mann, Paul Manship, Brice Marden, Ana Mendieta, László Moholy-Nagy, Eadweard Muybridge, Barnett Newman, Georgia O’Keeffe, Gordon Parks, Irene Rice Pereira, Judy Pfaff, Martin Puryear, Paul Revere, Mark Rothko, Betye Saar, John Singer Sargent, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Charles Sheeler, John Sloan, Leon Polk Smith, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Gilbert Stuart, Alma Thomas, George Tooker, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Carleton Watkins, Carrie Mae Weems, William Wegman, Benjamin West, and Stanley Whitney.

America in the Making was curated collaboratively by Ricardo Mercado Ruiz, Charles H. Sawyer Curatorial Fellow, Allison Kemmerer, The Mary Stripp and R. Crosby Kemper Director, Rachel Vogel, Assistant Curator, and Gordon Wilkins, Robert M. Walker Curator of American Art.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Sidney R. Knafel Fund and the Bernard and Louise Palitz Exhibitions Fund. Additional support is provided by Jana Paley (PA ’81).

In conjunction with America in the Making, renowned artist and Phillips Academy alumnus Peter Halley ’71 has unveiled a site-specific wall mural titled If you want to understand America… To create this piece, Halley invited Phillips Academy faculty and others to submit quotations by writers, artists, and cultural figures that respond to the prompt, “What is America?” The final installation synthesizes these perspectives into a vibrant, optically dynamic work that invites reflection on the many ways America is experienced, understood, and imagined.

This project is generously supported by the Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence Fund.

About the Addison Gallery of American Art
Devoted exclusively to American art, the Addison Gallery’s collection is one of the most important in the world. The museum, established in 1931, now includes over 29,000 works in all media—painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, prints, and decorative arts—from the 18th century to the present. The Addison Gallery, located in a stand-alone building on the campus of Phillips Academy—a residential school of grades 9 through 12 in Andover, Massachusetts—offers a continually rotating series of exhibitions and programs, all of which are free and open to the public. For more information on the Addison, visit addisongallery.org.

Press Contact:
Rebecca Mongeon
Addison Gallery of American Art
978-749-4342
rmongeon@andover.edu