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ALBANY, N.Y. -- Once, painters saw the American landscape as a limitless expanse of beauty and opportunity, a perspective that would be challenged and modified throughout the last century. 20th Century American Landscapes from The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the New York State Museum from May 31 to Oct. 14, 2001, reflects a century of great change in both the natural environment and in the artist's response.

The exhibition of 40 paintings from the Metropolitan's renowned Department of Modern Art portrays American scenery as both a literal place and as a symbol of personal and social struggle.

20th Century American Landscapes, to be shown in the West Gallery, is the sixth installment of the Fleet Great Art Exhibition and Education Program, which brings art from New York City museums to Albany. 20th Century American Landscapes is the Met's second contribution to the series. The Met has a long history, though, of sending great art to Albany, having contributed several exhibitions to the State Museum before the Fleet Great Art Series began in February 1999.

"This extraordinary group of paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art typifies the great American love for the land," said Mark Schaming, the State Museum's Director of Exhibitions. "These great works represent the diverse ways of both making art and looking at America. The paintings glorify the natural world, are imbued with the unique character of our cities and speak to a very American way of looking at the world."

Represented among the 37 artists are some of America's most notable modern painters, including William Glackens, John Steuart Curry, Georgia O'Keeffe and Fairfield Porter.

"Earth, sky, water and vegetation are the key elements in any landscape painting, but as the works in this exhibition show, modern artists have employed this traditional subject for many different purposes - to express personal feelings, cultural observations and political points of view. Depicted in this selection is the diverse and changing 'face' of America in the 20th century," said Lisa Mintz Messinger, Assistant Curator, Department of Modern Art at the Met. "The installation, arranged thematically, encourages viewers to compare and contrast a wide range of images, and draw their own associations with the American landscape."

The exhibition pieces together a region-by-region map of the U.S. from 1907 to 1991: farms of the Midwest, cotton fields of the deep South, vistas of the Southwest, and the rugged countryside of New England and upstate New York. It also traces the emergence of industry. The 1931 painting by John Kane, The Monongahela River Valley, celebrates the smoke stacks and rail yards as much as the hillsides and rivers the new infrastructure disrupts.

At the start of the century, American painters, influenced by the French Impressionists, often glorified nature, as with Eugene Speicher's romantic Morning Light and Louis Eilshemius' golden Landscape, Binghamton, New York, both painted in 1907. This view was expanded to promote the virtues of working the land, as in Frederic Grant's The Homestead, c. 1930; Thomas Hart Benton's Cotton Pickers, Georgia, 1928-29; and Paul Sample's whimsical Janitor's Holiday of 1936.

At the same time, another branch of landscape artists chose a less literal tack by blurring the horizon lines and reducing a scene to its forms and colors. Such works, including Walt Kuhn's The Willow Tree and the Cow in 1923, and Loren MacIver's Carey's Backyard in 1939, offer a highly personalized perspective. Also using this more modern approach, Arthur Dove, with Mountain and Sky (1925), and Helen Torr, with Crimson and Green Leaves (1927) sought to reveal the power of nature as a unifying theme.

Other artists used their canvases to recognize the danger, hardship or isolation conjured up by a rocky shoreline or vast mountain range. These rugged images are captured in a pair of paintings from opposite sides of the country - Ernest Blumenschein's Taos Valley in 1933 from New Mexico and Marsden Hartley's Mt. Katahdin, Maine, No. 2, 1939-1940.

Throughout the century, the two stylistic camps of realism and abstraction have co-existed and overlapped. Fairfield Porter's The Kittiwake and the John Walton (1962), for example, can be appreciated as much for its arrangement of shapes and contrasting colors as for its tranquil seaside subject.

More recently, contemporary artists Jack Beal, Louisa Chase and James McGarrell have used the landscape to suggest an inner, often disturbing, psychological landscape.

Other themes include the nation's great agricultural riches, highlighted in Curry's 1931 canvas, Spring Shower (Western Kansas Landscape), and Marjorie Portnow's upstate New York landscape Cambridge Corn from 1981.

The contributions of women and immigrants are an important theme of 20th century American art. In addition to Portnow, six painters represented are women: Helen Torr, Georgia O'Keeffe, Loren MacIver, Grace Hartigan, Idelle Weber and Louisa Chase. Four of the artists represented were born outside the United States: John Kane, Joseph Stella, Max Weber and Rafael Ferrer. Whether they have expressed their feelings with soft lyricism, various forms of abstraction, or a naïve folk-inspired style, the artists of the last century have demonstrated the great appeal the American landscape has held for them.

The New York State Museum expresses its gratitude to Fleet, Senator Roy M. Goodman, the New York State Senate, Assemblyman Ronald Canestrari, the New York State Assembly, the Hearst Foundation, Inc., Harry Rosenfeld and First Lady Libby Pataki. Many thanks also to our generous media sponsors: FOX23, Lang Media, Times Union, UPN and WPYX-FM.

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*Color slides are available by calling 518-486-2003.

The New York State Museum is open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.