Exhibition Opening: Shelter from the Storm: An Artist’s Eye

The Artist’s Eye is an ongoing series of exhibitions that the Academy began in 1992, inviting a National Academician to curate an exhibition around a theme of their choosing from the Academy’s incomparable collection. This exhibition brings together architect Stan Allen and visual artist Polly Apfelbaum in a collaborative curatorial project that builds on decades of dialogue and creative exchange between them as a married couple. Allen and Apfelbaum were selected by the Academy’s Exhibition Committee (comprising National Academicians, Board members and curators) for their distinct yet deeply complementary ways of thinking and making; his grounded in spatial politics and architectural design, hers in material experimentation and vibrant abstraction.

This anniversary edition of the Artist's Eye will be the first since 2013 and feature several other firsts: the first time two NAs will co-curate the show, the first time an architect will curate the show, and the first collection-only show of this scale since opening our Chelsea galleries in 2023.

The Academy’s 200-year history spans ​numerous wars; it encompasses slavery, the decimation of native peoples, and the Civil Rights Era; universal suffrage and the struggle for women’s rights​; the atomic bomb, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. The artists of the National Academy have lived that history – as citizens, artists, and individuals.​ Entitled Shelter From the Storm: An Artist’s Eye with Stan Allen and Polly Apfelbaum, this exhibition brings together work that explores conflict, memory, and resilience, both metaphorically and literally, offering a layered and deeply personal view of how artists and architects have navigated and responded to moments of upheaval throughout American history. ​ By working across conventional categories – landscape, abstraction, architecture, figuration, cityscape – the curators highlight emotional, symbolic, and material connections across time and media.

Shelter From the Storm rethinks, reinterprets, and reframes the Academy’s historic holdings through the lens of Allen and Apfelbaum’s creative and conceptual practices, bringing new perspectives to the collection. Their approach acknowledges our history in a nuanced way that reflects a plurality of experiences and responses to events that have shaped our collective histories.

Image: Louise Fishman, The Sway of Memory, 2015. Oil on linen. Overall: 66 x 39 in. National Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of Louise Fishman, 2017