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Seeing the City: Sloan's New York

May 22 – September 14, 2008

John Sloan's images of New York helped define the city in the popular imagination. In gritty depictions of urban life, Sloan celebrated the metropolis of New York by focusing on street scenes, elevated trains, public spaces, and the lives of ordinary Americans. Yet Sloan's vision was a subjective one, tied to his particular observations of the neighborhoods in which he lived and the individuals he encountered. More than a series of distinct locations, Sloan's images of New York reflect the artist’s own movement through and experience of the city.

Organized by the Delaware Art Museum, this exhibition gathers together a wealth of material in all media from 1900 to the 1930s—on loan from various public and private collections—in order to demonstrate the correlation between where Sloan created his art and what he depicted. Seeing the City maps Sloan's New York, locating precisely the sites portrayed in his work and examining the personal meaning tied to the places he chose to depict again and again.

Curators: Joyce K. Schiller, Curator, and Heather Campbell Coyle, Associate Curator, Delaware Art Museum. The Smart Museum presentation is overseen by Anne Leonard, Smart Museum Curator and Mellon Program Coordinator.

Seeing the City: Sloan's New York is organized by the Delaware Art Museum. The exhibition has received generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Helen Farr Sloan Trust.

The Smart Museum's presentation of the exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Feitler Family Fund. Additional support has been provided by the Terra Foundation on behalf of James Donnelley and Neil Harris.

Presented in the Richard and Mary L. Gray Gallery for Special Exhibitions.

Top: Installation view of Seeing the City. Photo by Tom Van Eynde.