Your Search for Meaning

Have you ever stopped in front of a work of art and thought “what does this mean?” or “what was the artist thinking?” The artist’s intent is often hard to define, but we usually have personal reactions and can create our own meaning. Your response to art is based on your own experiences and opinions and the world/culture in which you live. Often artworks may inspire you to form new thoughts. 

What were the Hudson River school artists trying to say? Do their paintings affect your attitudes about nature? In the past, these paintings have influenced Americans’ views about nature in a variety of ways. This exhibition explores the meanings people from three past eras have found in the art of the Hudson River school. 

As you look at the landscape paintings, form your own meaning and consider how these pictures may influence your ideas about nature. Please take the time to complete a “visitor’s response.” 

Woodcut of the gallery of the Art Union by S. Wallin
American Art Union Bullitan III, 1849


Museum visitors discuss the meaning in a Hudson River School painting, 1991
Albany Institute’s Education Department


Museum visitors appreciating a painting in the 1961 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Art Exhibition
Albany Institute of History & Art Library