Linking Collections, Building Connections

The visual arts provide critical source material for the interpretation of historical change. The city of Kingston, the first capital of New York State and a bellwether of the Hudson Valley’s economic health, reveals transformation over time through the lens of the HVVACC members, whose collecting practices are themselves responsive to economic and social conditions.

Spanning from 1920 to 2008, this section of the exhibition provides a window into Kingston’s landscapes, architecture, landmarks, and residents. The work here is predominantly photographic: alternately documentary, painterly, or staged in ways that imitate photographic objectivity. Paintings and prints demonstrate how the industrial cityscape gave impetus to an urban variant of landscape painting.