This Fourth of July weekend, Americans can celebrate revolutionary ‘gatecrashers’

Brandywine River Musuem is home to Wyeth works of iconoclastic fame

“Viewing art in person, especially in a museum, is a very different experience than seeing it on a screen. whether it’s a computer, television, or even film screen. In person, the finer details and textures of the works of art are much more evident.”

— Amanda Burdan

CHADDS FORD » Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art is open this holiday weekend and visitors can experience a special exhibit honoring American artists who made history by creating great works — their own way — and without permission.

‘Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America’ is open now through Sept. 5.

The exhibition highlights artwork created by artists without formal training who ultimately “crashed the gates” of American society and redefined a landscape of sophisticated museums with vibrant, and sometimes sorrowful, new trends after World War I.

Artworks on display include pieces by Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, Horace Pippin and John Kane, Josephine Joy, Morris Hirshfield, Lawrence Lebduska, Patrick Sullivan and many others.

The grounds of the historic museum, along the Brandywine Creek off Route 1, span land in both Chester and Delaware counties.

“Viewing art in person, especially in a museum, is a very different experience than seeing it on a screen,” said Amanda Burdan, “whether it’s a computer, television, or even film screen. In person, the finer details and textures of the works of art are much more evident.”

Burdan is the senior curator for the Brandywine River Museum of Art.

And while folks can visit two special exhibitions at the museum this holiday weekend, including “Gatecrashers: The Rise of the

Self-Taught Artist in America” as well as “Dawoud Bey: Night Coming Tenderly, Black” on the facility’s third floor, much of the second and first floors contain the great works of the Wyeth family.

“N.C. Wyeth was a great master of color, using his palette as one of several tools to tell the story he was illustrating,” Burdan said. “Color is key in setting a mood. It can help to convey a quiet, peaceful scene through calming colors or an exciting, dramatic scene with bold, contrasting colors. Colors can lead the eye through a painting, highlighting important details for the audience and directing the viewer to discover more of the story as they continue to look.”

The artwork of N.C. Wyeth is featured on the museum’s second floor.

“Many illustrators, knowing their works would

“The Brandywine has been very fortunate to have had a close connection to the Wyeth family since we opened our doors to the public in 1971, starting with an N.C. Wyeth exhibition made possible by loans from Andrew and Betsy Wyeth — who were close friends with one of our founders, George A. ‘Frolic’ Weymouth.”

be reproduced in black and white, created their paintings in shades of gray, omitting color altogether,” Burdan said. “Wyeth always worked in color — though sometimes in limited shades, as in his endpapers for Treasure Island and The Last of the Mohicans. As a result, the paintings themselves are incredibly impactful.”

“The Brandywine has been very fortunate to have had a close connection to the Wyeth family since we opened our doors to the public in 1971, starting with an N.C. Wyeth exhibition made possible by loans from Andrew and Betsy Wyeth — who were close friends with one of our founders, George A. ‘Frolic’ Weymouth,” said Andrew Stewart, director of marketing and communications at Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art.

— Andrew Stewart, director of marketing and communications at Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art

“Since that time, we have built a wonderful collection of works by many members of the Wyeth family, most notably N.C., Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, as well as having the studios and homes of both N.C. and Andrew Wyeth open to the public seasonally for guided tours,” Stewart said.

In May, the museum announced a new gift and collections-sharing arrangement with the Wyeth Foundation for American Art and the Farnsworth Museum in Maine.

This partnership will give the Brandywine, the Farnsworth and other museums across the world access to over 7,000 works by Andrew Wyeth — all of which will be managed through a new curator position at the Brandywine, he said.

The Wyeth Foundation also gave a gift of over 40 works by N.C. Wyeth and more than 130 works by Wyeth family members and other American artists to the Brandywine, recognizing the museum’s longstanding relationship with the Wyeths, he said.

“Lastly we are planning a new major exhibition by Jamie Wyeth in 2024 called Jamie Wyeth: Unsettled, and we also have been cooperating on a new documentary about the life of Jamie Wyeth by Glenn Holsten — who was previously responsible for an awardwinning documentary on Andrew Wyeth as part of the American Master’s series on PBS,” Stewart said.

And rather one is visiting Southeastern Pennsylvania on holiday or staying local this Fourth of July weekend, there is much to see at the Brandywine River Museum of Art — right here at home.

JEN SAMUEL — MEDIANEWS GROUP The exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art and curated by Katherine Jentleson, the High Museum of Art’s Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art. Themes within the exhibit include American Mythologies, Workers First, Negotiating National Identity and Convergence and Divergence with American Moderism. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation. Gatecrashers is sponsored by Chase with additional support is provided by the Matz Family Charitable Fund; Mr. and Mrs. Anson McC. Beard Jr.; and the Fawcett Family Foundation.

JEN SAMUEL — MEDIANEWS GROUP A special exhibit is running at the Brandywine River Museum of Art now through September 5.

JEN SAMUEL — MEDIANEWS GROUP Children look at the painting “In a Dream I Meet General Washington” by Andrew Wyeth at the Brandywine River Museum of Art this June.