︎Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues Group Exhibition
On view February 15–August 17, 2025
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar
Across two centuries, artists have portrayed the Hudson Valley as an earthly paradise remote from the modern world. Though close to New York City, the region came to represent its idyllic opposite: a promised land of pristine beauty, pre-industrial lifeways, and utopian enclaves. In the wry words of one New York journalist, the Hudson Valley became a “great green hope” for the “urban blues.” At the same time, this enduring pastoral myth cloaks the region’s active ties to urban tourism and trade while obscuring histories of violent settlement, enslaved labor, and resource extraction. Gathering historic and contemporary art in various media, the exhibition invites viewers to explore how the Hudson Valley has been pictured as a place both proximate to the city and its opposite—a “great green hope” as much myth as reality.
Curated by John P. Murphy, Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings and Ian Shelley, Loeb Collections Curatorial Fellow
Exhibition Opening and Panel Discussion
Feb. 22, 2025, Panel discussion at 2:00 p.m.
Artists Tanya Marcuse, Qiana Mestrich, and Lisa Sanditz will discuss how their work responds to the Hudson Valley landscape in myth and reality.