In 1922, Daniel Garber praised the quarries along the Delaware River as giving “you things like the Grand Canyon but on a scale commensurate with the canvas.” For Garber and his contemporaries, these sites of extraction offered new possibilities within their landscape paintings, even as the artists carefully edited out any unsightly markers of active industry. Drawing from public and private collections, including the Michener’s own holdings, this exhibition explores the depiction of local quarries and other industries by Pennsylvania Impressionist painters like Daniel Garber, Charles Rosen, Letitia Maxwell Ely, Edward Redfield, Bernard Badura, and John Folinsbee at a time of industrial transformation in the greater Delaware River Valley. This exhibition additionally commemorates the 100th anniversary of Garber’s monumental Wooded Watershed mural, made for the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia to celebrate Pennsylvania’s natural resources.
Abstractions in Nature: Quarries and Industry in Pennsylvania Impressionism is presented through the generosity of Rebecca Bushnell and John Toner, with additional support from the Michener Art Museum’s Business Partners.