OBERLIN, OH - The Allen Memorial Art Museum presents The Modern Landscape, on view through December 23, 2007 at the John N. Stern Gallery. Landscape painting by its very nature is evidence of the complex interaction between humans and the land around them. This exhibition, drawn entirely from the AMAM ’s collection.

Highlights works by artists as diverse as Alexander Calder, Giorgio de Chirico, Arshile Gorky, James McDougal Hart, Piet Mondrian and Claude Monet, among others, who have taken up the subjects of the natural world and changing notions of its beauty, resources, and man’s place within it.

Henri-Edmond Cross’s The Return of the Fisherman, for example, is the result of Cross’s intense observations of the Mediterranean coastline at the small village of Saint-Clair, where he lived. With vibrant colors and a pointillist technique, he depicted the path to the beach, with the rocks known as “Les Baleines” (The Whales) visible in the surf and a fisherman in the foreground returning from a day’s work. Cross’s combination of topographical accuracy, abstracted forms and brilliant tonalities is evidence of his attempt to resolve the tension between the use of specific natural motifs and his own inner vision. Organized by Andria Derstine, AMAM Curator of Western Art.

Founded in 1917, the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is one of the finest college or university collections in the United States. Comprising more than 12,000 works of art from virtually every culture and spanning the history of art, the AMAM's collection is a vital cultural resource for the students, faculty, and staff of Oberlin College as well as the surrounding community. Notable strengths include seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art, nineteenth and early twentieth-century European and contemporary American art, and Asian, European, and American works on paper. The collection is housed in an impressive Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Cass Gilbert and named after its founder, Dr. Dudley Peter Allen (B.A. 1875), a distinguished graduate and trustee of Oberlin College. In 1977, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates designed an addition that represents one of the earliest and finest examples of postmodern architecture in the United States.

Visit Allen Memorial Art Museum at : www.oberlin.edu/allenart/