Terra Museum of American Art

Terra Museum of American Art

Chicago, IL

Resource Library articles and essays honoring the American experience through its art:

Conversion to Modernism: The Early Work of Man Ray (1/31/04)

Leaving the Country: George Bellows at Woodstock (11/19/03)

Debating American Modernism: Stieglitz, Duchamp, and the New York Avant-Garde (8/8/03)

The Master Prints of Edward S. Curtis: Portraits of Native America (7/14/03)

Out of the Shadows: Helen Torr, A Retrospective (7/14/03)

A Rich Simplicity: Folk Art from the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection (7/14/03)

First Exposure: The Sketchbooks and Photographs of Theodore Robinson (10/13/00)

Indivisible: Stories of American Community (10/13/00)

In Search of The Promised Land: Paintings by Frederic Edwin Church (7/21/00)

Figures and Forms: Selections from the Terra Foundatian for the Arts (5/20/00)

The American West: Out of Myth, Into Reality (3/11/00)

Outsider and Folk Art: The Chicago Collections (10/30/99), revised (1/8/00)

The City and the Country: American Perspectives 1870-1920 (10/18/99)

Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts & Crafts (9/99)

Terra Museum of American Art was founded in Evanston, Illinois in 1980 by the late Daniel J. Terra, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Cultural Affairs, a successful businessman and an avid collector of American art. The museum ceased operations in October 2004.

In 1992 Ambassador Terra opened a second institution, the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny in France, home to a colony of American artists who had come to work in the village where Monet had moved his studio in 1883.

In a November 2011, TFAO received a news release explaining recent activities of the Terra Foundation for American Art, also founded by Mr. Terra, saying: "Established in 1978, the Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States. With financial resources of more than $250 million, an exceptional collection of American art from the colonial era to 1945, and an expansive grant program, it is one of the leading foundations focused on American art, and devotes approximately $12 million annually in support of American art exhibitions, projects, and research worldwide."

The Terra Foundation for American Art presents an 2003 online video titled VTS: A Tool for Building Visual Literacy, Language Skills, and Critical Thinking. According to the web page for the video, "In this video, art educator Philip Yenawine demonstrates the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to a group of educators participating in a 2003 workshop at the Terra Museum of American Art... [It] documents Yenawine facilitating a VTS discussion about a painting in the Terra Foundation for American Art collection, Gallery of the Louvre by Samuel F.B. Morse."

Google Book Searches conducted in 2008 and 2013 by Traditional Fine Arts Organization (TFAO) located the following brochures, catalogues and gallery guides published on paper in connection with the Museum and with a topic of American representational art. The list may not include all relevant publications. Titles are listed by date of publication, with most recent listed first. Information on publications may be in error or incomplete. Titles may be followed by links to related essays published by Resource Library. See Definitions for more information on finding brochures, catalogues and gallery guides using TFAO's website.

N.C. Wyth and His Grandson: a legacy, by Stephen May, 1997 - 8 pages

Two Centuries of American Folk Painting: exhibition February 10-April 21, 1985, by Robert Charles Bishop, 1985, 6 pages

Monotypes by Maurice Prendergast in the Terra Museum of American Art, By Cecily Langdale, 1984, 159 pages. Original from: the University of Michigan, Digitized Nov 14, 2007. ISBN 0932171001, 9780932171009

Two Hundred Years of American Painting: from Private Chicago Collections : [exhibition] June 25 - September 2, 1983, 48 pages

American Super Realism: from the Morton G Neumann Family Collection : [exhibition] November 4 - December 7, 1983, By Linda Chase, 1983, 48 pages

American Naive Paintings: from the National Gallery of Art December 19, 1981-March 14, 1982, by Ronald McKnight Melvin, 32 pages

Five American Masters of Watercolor: Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Maurice Prendergast, John Marin, Charles Burchfield : [exhibition] May 5 - July 12, 1981, 1981, 32 pages

LIFE IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICA: AN EXHIBITION OF AMERICAN GENRE PAINTING, 1981, 48 pages

Book information courtesy of Google Books and Terra Foundation for American Art. This is not a complete list.

Why was this sub-index page prepared?

When Resource Library publishes over time more than one article concerning an institution, there is created as an additional resource for readers a sub-index page containing links to each Resource Library article or essay concerning that institution, plus available information on its location and other descriptive information.

See our Museums Explained to learn about the "inner workings" of art museums and the functions of staff members. In the exhibitions section find out how to get the most out of a museum visit. See definitions for a glossary of museum-related words used in articles.

To help you plan visits to institutions exhibiting American art when traveling see Sources of Articles Indexed by State within the United States.

Unless otherwise noted, all text and image materials relating to the above institutional source were provided by that source. Before reproducing or transmitting text or images please read Resource Library's user agreement.

Our catalogues provide many more useful resources.

American Representational Art has links to dozens of topics.

Distinguished Artists is a national registry of historic artists.

About Resource Library

Resource Library is a free online publication of nonprofit Traditional Fine Arts Organization (TFAO). Since 1997, Resource Library and its predecessor Resource Library Magazine have cumulatively published online 1,300+ articles and essays written by hundreds of identified authors, thousands of other texts not attributable to named authors, plus 24,000+ images, all providing educational and informational content related to American representational art. Texts and related images are provided almost exclusively by nonprofit art museum, gallery and art center sources.

All published materials provide educational and informational content to students, scholars, teachers and others. Most published materials relate to exhibitions. Materials may include whole exhibition gallery guides, brochures or catalogues or texts from them, perviously published magazine or journal articles, wall panels and object labels, audio tour scripts, play scripts, interviews, blogs, checklists and news releases, plus related images.

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(left: JP Hazeltine, founding editor, Resource Library)

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