On Friday, Sept. 27, the Arts and Literature Society paired up with the History Club and the Wichita Falls Museum of Art to host a walkthrough of “Wilderness Passing: The Hudson River Portfolio, 1820–1825.”
English professor Todd Giles put this exhibit together with WFMA collections manager BriAnna Satterfield.
Giles and Satterfield originally began working together a few years ago to establish the WFMA’s online searchable database. Through this and Giles’s podcast, “The Vault Unlocked,” Giles gained access to every piece of art the museum has. Through these two avenues, Giles founded the Hudson River Portfolio and began working to create the exhibition.
“What I like to do personally is let something peak my interest. And one of the cool things about teaching here is I have the ability follow different rabbit trails. And so we started talking about this collection in here, and we’re like, ‘Yeah let’s do an exhibition,’” Giles said. “Because I don’t think the museum’s ever done an exhibition of the Hudson River Portfolio.”
The art pieces in “Wilderness Passing” are a part of WFMA’s permanent collection. Satterfield explained that the museum had the collection in their vault for years. Over time, the museum gained more and more prints from the collection.
“We had it in our collection, and actually, it’s been collected over multiple years, so we have every piece from the portfolio. It’s probably, at least that I’m aware of, one of the first times it’s been shown in its entirety,” Satterfield said.
The pieces in the collection originally started as watercolor sketches done by artist William Guy Wall in the summer of 1820. Wall later collaborated with another artist, John Hill, to turn his sketches into hand-colored etchings called aquatints.
Without collaboration, these pieces would not exist and this exhibition could not have been accomplished. Moffett special collections librarian Alissa Russell made the book cradles for the books that are on display alongside the prints.
“I mean I was excited to help because he came to me with a list of items already, his hit list that he wanted,” Russell said. “And we’ve already worked with the museum before with the exhibition, so we were glad to help.”
However, what this exhibition really brought to the table was giving Giles’s students a way to visualize the setting of the books they are reading in class. English sophomore and Arts and Literature Society president Trinity Kronlein found the experience of getting to see the setting of what she is learning about in class interesting.
“To be able to see like each of the strokes and each of the, you know, like the etching and stuff like that in specifically the Hudson River pieces was really, really impressive,” Krolein said. “And I’m currently in the class where we’re talking about a lot of the writers that have to do with the Hudson River stuff. So to be able to combine what we’re learning in there and seeing like exactly the nature that they’re talking about on the walls, I think was really, it was really cool and interesting.”
“Wilderness Passing: The Hudson River Portfolio, 1820–1825” will be on display until December 21. The WFMA will be collaborating with the Fain College of Fine Arts for their “Print Rally and Art Market” event on October 19 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.. “The Vault Unlocked” podcast episode going over “Wilderness Passing: The Hudson River Portfolio, 1820–1825,” has already released on Spotify.
