Dennis Dixon is heading West!: Day Twelve: Cherry Hill, NJ - Zimmerli Art Museum - Newark Museum - Montclair Art Museum - Hudson River Museum - Newington-Cropsey Foundation

200 miles, 8 1/2 hours, 5 museums!

Up for our last day of museums - hit the road a little after 9 - up to Rutgers' Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick. The two best pieces there are:

Albert Bierstadt, Glen Ellis Falls, 1869

John Kensett, View of the Shrewsbury River, New Jersey, 1859

There was also a nice space for Dale Chihuly's "Rivera Blue Macchia Chartreuse Lip Wrap".

I had previously seen his works at the Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO

and at the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas

and at The Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio

Then off from the Zimmerli to The Newark Museum. We were early (opens at noon), so we looked at the garden area in front of the museum. Imagine my surprise to see a poster/presentation titled "The Polhemus Family":

My Dad's name was Theodore Polhemus Dixon, Jr., so I can only imagine what sort of Baltimore connection my (Dixon) family had, long before my Dad married Eugenia Whyte Carton from Baltimore.

The first thing I saw was another piece by Dale Chihuly (Permanent Blue Macchia with Cadmium Orange Lip Wrap, 1986)

My database has 15 artists at The Newark Museum, and we did see lovely pieces by Bierstadt and Bradford; Church, Cole, and Cropsey; Duncanson and Durand; Heade, Homer, and Huntington. My favorite was Thomas Moran, Sunset, Venice, 1902

I was very happy because I don't think that I had seen any of Moran's later paintings on this trip - they seem to combine Turner's dramatic skies with some type of American color palette (orange/greens/blues).

From The Newark Museum, it was a quick trip to the Montclair Art Museum. My two favorites were:
Thomas Moran, Scene on the Snake River, ca. 1879

and Martin Johnson Heade, Gathering Hay in the Salt Marshes, ca. 1876-82

Then one hour up to the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York. Not very many pieces, but I am happy to have been able to visit it.

The nicest painting is one loaned (since 1971) from the Hastings-on-Hudson Union Free School District: Jasper Cropsey, View at Hastings-on-Hudson, Circa 1895-1897:

Being in a "Jasper Cropsey" frame of mind, we drove 3 miles up the Hudson River to the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in Hastings-on-Hudson.

This is a beautiful exhibition area, and Cropsey's home and studio, and, unfortunately, no photographs were allowed inside. There is a white ballroom on the second floor, an exquisite space painted white, with a lot of natural light, and Cropsey paintings (both from Private Collections as well as belonging to the Foundation) along all the wals. An exquisite way to end a beautiful trip (well, we still have an hour tonight, and three hours tomorrow before we are home).

Friday, May 2
Holiday Inn, Cherry Hill, NJ
1 hour -- Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ
3/4 hour -- The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
1/4 hour -- Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
1 hour -- Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
1/4 hour -- Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
1 hour -- Holiday Inn, Danvers, CT

here is today's playlist:

Thompson Square - Just Feels Good