The Nassau County Museum of Art Presents Robert Hite's "Imagined Histories" Photographs

Written by Joseph Peterson Saturday, 25 June 2011 20:56

Roslyn Harbor, NY.- The Nassau Museum of Art is proud to present "Robert Hite: Imagined Histories", on view at the museum until September 4th. Sculptures sited among Hudson Valley landscapes and dramatic black and white photographs are all featured in th exhibition which is hosted by the museum's Contemporary Gallery and Art Space for Children on view through September 4. Hite is a sculptor, painter and photographer. A native of Virginia, he now lives and works in Esopus, in NY’s Hudson Valley. His work, always reflective of nature and of the surrounding landscape, reveals the influence of the rich Southern narrative tradition and his Hudson Valley surroundings. Hite has studied and photographed rural dwellings in Central and South America, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and the Southern United States.

From 2006 to 2010, Hite installed and photographed a series of mixed/media architectural sculptures called Imagined Histories: Hudson Valley Landscapes. The exhibition includes sculpture and black and white photographs from the series. The works for the exhibition have been selected by Elaine Berger for the museum’s Contemporary Collectors Circle and by Museum Director Karl E. Willers, Ph.D.

Born in 1956 in rural Virginia, Robert Hite is inspired both by a rich southern narrative tradition and a closeness to nature. Hite has photographed and made a study of rural houses and shacks in Central and South America, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. His paintings, sculptures, and photographs come filtered through a lens on the natural world, layered with gestures of human and ecological struggle, and with a sensitivity to what is beautiful, poetic, and harsh within this interaction. In 1997, Hite and his family moved to an old Methodist church and parsonage in the small village of Esopus, New York. The clapboard church, built in 1846, calls to mind the imagery found in his artwork.


Ranked among the nation's largest, most important suburban art museums, Nassau County Museum of Art is located about 25 miles east of New York City in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island on the former Frick Estate, a spectacular property in the heart of Long Island's fabled Gold Coast. The main museum building, named in honor of art collectors and philanthropists Arnold and Joan Saltzman, is a three-story Georgian mansion that exemplifies Gold Coast architecture of the late 19th century. In addition to the Arnold & Joan Saltzman Fine Art building, Nassau County Museum of Art includes the Art Space for Children, the Sculpture Park, Formal Garden of historic importance, the Pinetum, an architecturally-significant restored trellis, rare specimen trees, marked walking trails, and the Art School where an extensive array of beginning to advanced art classes are held for adults and children. The permanent collection of more than 500 art objects spans American and European art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Encompassing all types of media, the collection includes works by Auguste Rodin, Georges Braque, Jean-Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg, Chaim Gross, Moses Soyer, Frank Stella, and Alex Katz among many others. The 145 acres of the former Frick Estate constitute one of the largest publicly accessible sculpture gardens on the East Coast. Among the more than 40 sculptures sited on the property to interact with the natural environment are works by Tom Otterness, Fernando Botero, Chaim Gross, Alejandro Colunga, Masayuki Nagare, Richard Serra, Manolo Valdes and many others. The Sculpture Park was founded in 1989. Visit the museum's website at ... http://nassaumuseum.org

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