Exhibition Reviews

"Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America." Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main St., Hartford, CT 06103.       Traveling exhibition. June 6–Oct. 19, 2003, Wadsworth Atheneum; Feb. 22–May 23, 2004, Allentown Museum of Art, Allentown, Pa. 130 objects plus furniture pieces. Thomas Andrew Denenberg, curator; Trina Bowen, assistant curator; Cecil Adams and Mark Giuliano, designers.       Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America. By Thomas Andrew Denenberg. (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2003. x, 228 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-300-09683-6.)       Symposium; lecture series; gallery talks; tours; family programs.
Wallace Nutting, the Congregational minister from Rockbottom, Massachusetts, who earned fame in the 1910s and 1920s as a purveyor of nostalgic images of colonial life marketed to middle-class consumers, would have thrilled to see his creations take center stage in a temporary exhibition curated by Thomas Andrew Denenberg, the Richard Koopman curator of American decorative arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. The exhibition, which traveled to the Allentown Museum of Art, examines Nutting's role in popularizing America's colonial past as an antidote for the social ills of a rapidly urbanizing nation. With his hand-tinted photographs of genteel young women in colonial garb and his faithful reproductions of "pilgrim" furniture, Nutting preached both aesthetic and social reform and encouraged Americans to embrace the perceived simplicity of a time before industrialization. Seeing Nutting's images beautifully displayed on the gallery walls makes it hard not to appreciate his vision. Most bewitching are the life-size murals, enlargements of Nutting's photographs, that Denenberg had made for the exhibition. But Denenberg does not limit himself to celebrating Nutting's artistic accomplishments. This revealing exhibition critically examines Nutting's presentation of himself and his work, questioning the assumption that Nutting practiced the antimodernist doctrine he promoted and revealing the assembly-line production and modern marketing methods that underpinned his work. In doing so, the exhibition places Nutting at the crossroads of modernity, a place where the seemingly contradictory forces of technology, art, and nostalgia converge.	1
Appropriately, biography drives much of "Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America." Owing as much to the idiosyncrasies of their creator as to their cultural milieu, Nutting's artistic productions began in 1904, when a case of "the nerves" drove him from the pulpit. Adopting amateur photography to assuage his anxiety, Nutting soon turned his hobby into a business, selling his prints through traveling salesmen and mail-order catalogs. While Nutting's imagery included foreign views and natural landscapes, Denenberg points out that by 1915 nearly one-fifth of his production were "colonials," idealized images of women in historic garb or stately old homes and rural streets. Placing this historical imagery in its visual and social context, Denenberg probes the aesthetics of both high art and sentimental kitsch, finding precedent for Nutting's fixation with the past in Victorian parlor chairs crafted from recycled spinning wheel parts and in the faithful reproductions of colonial interiors in paintings by the artist Enoch Wood Perry. Most striking is work of the photographers Emma Lewis Coleman, Frances and Mary Allen, and Amasa Day Chaffee, whose use of camera technology to reconstruct the past mirrors Nutting's own careful staging.	2
Surrounded by both authentic antiques and twentieth-century reproductions manufactured by Wallace Nutting's furniture firm, exhibition visitors explore the antique craze that made "early American" a popular choice for home decor. The exhibit depicts how Nutting helped popularize (and sentimentalize) the American colonial era during the early twentieth century. Courtesy Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.   . . . There are about 1032 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.