THE CIVIL WARExhibitions and Programs

H U D S O N R I V E R M U S E U M

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THE CIVIL WAR Exhibitions and Programs

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The Civil War is the critical

turning point in the narrative

of America’s history.

T he war, often and famously depicted

in film adaptations, documentary

series, and countless novels, is a

subject that drums up specific and iconic

imagery. In three exhibitions, the Museum

devotes its resources to exploring the Civil

War through a multi-layered approach

to foster greater understanding and

connections to our history.

In two of these exhibitions, Red

Grooms, renowned for his Pop art, focuses

on the human tale of the war. In his epic

battle scenes and small works of key

players from the conflict, and in a new sculp-

to-pictorama — a walkable diorama of the

singular historical moment when Lincoln

made his way to Peekskill — his works fill

the space of the Museum’s middle-level

galleries and set the scene that immerses

the viewer in the mindspace of this war. In

another exhibition, Grooms’s art is comple-

mented by historical documents, photo-

graphs, and artwork from the

Museum’s Permanent Collection.

So why explore the Civil War, here,

in New York? The Civil War is not just a

story of battles fought in the South. One

battle was fought in the North, the Battle

of Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, but that

does not mean that blood was not shed in

New York — it was, in the New York Draft

Riots of 1863. The strain, sacrifice, and loss

left by the war on all its fronts was felt in

the Northern states, just as in those in the

South. Many Northern cemeteries have

Civil War monuments that honor those who served, and Westchester County residents played

their part fighting for the Union. The Hudson River Museum tells the tale of the war from

the perspective of our county as well as that of our country.

Beyond the human and local impact of the war, no exploration of the Civil War can

take place without discussing slavery and Reconstruction, and to the extent we can, discussing

the legacy of the Civil War and how it resonates today. In the months ahead, the Museum will

interpret and expand on these themes through extensive programming.

Red Grooms. Battle of Shiloh, 2014

COVER Red Grooms. Lincoln in Beersheba, 2010

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The Blue and The Gray

Artist Red Grooms brings colorful,

expressionist style to his interpre-

tations of Civil War battles and the

personalities on both sides of the conflict.

Growing up in Tennessee, Grooms

was fascinated by military history and the

Civil War. The Blue and The Gray includes

a portrait of Lincoln surrounded by action

scenes in A Twelve Year Old Boy’s Civil War,

an example of his early painterly efforts

from 1949. Returning to this subject more

than 45 years later, Grooms records the

panorama of the war waged between the

Northern and Southern states. He delved

into primary sources of the period, such

as the photographs of Mathew Brady, one

of America’s first photographers, who was

known for documenting Civil War scenes.

County’s history. A stage set filled with figures transforms the gallery into the waterfront at

Peekskill and the artist’s imagining of this historical event on the eve of the Civil War.

During a ten-day journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington D.C. for his

inauguration in 1861, President-elect Lincoln stopped in several major cities and paused

in Peekskill before entering

New York City. Larger than

life, Lincoln at the back of his

train arrives and is greeted by

excited admirers — a colorful

array of citizens, children,

railroad workers, a brass

band, and militia volunteers.

Who Fought to Save the Union

Images and objects that show

the art and culture of the

nation and New York at the

time of the Civil War are drawn from

the Museum’s Permanent Collection to

augment Red Grooms’s Civil War and

Lincoln exhibitions. Themes include a

soldier’s call to arms, Lincoln as presi-

dent and martyr, and the long memory

of the war’s veterans. Harper’s Weekly,

an American political magazine, report-

ed news from the frontlines, complete

with illustrations based on sketches by

artist-reporters, such as Winslow Homer

and Edwin Forbes. Several of Homer’s

wood engravings and a painting by

Forbes show Union soldiers in battle

and in quiet moments in camp.

Red Grooms. Lincoln On the Hudson, 2016. Detail Model for a full-scale sculpto-pictorama constructed in the Museum galleries

Explore the Civil War : The Exhibitions

Red Grooms. New York Fire Zouaves, 2010

Winslow Homer. “The Army of the Potomac — a Sharp-shooter on Picket Duty.” Harper’s Weekly, November 15, 1862

Grooms based some portraits and battle

scenes on these photographs, which he

painted on wood panels and canvas, even

on the face of sliced logs. To display the

work, Grooms collaborated with his wife

Lysiane Luong Grooms, an artist and archi-

tect, to fabricate unique frames or mounts.

Lincoln On the Hudson

Inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s brief so-

journ in Peekskill, Grooms created a new

sculpto-pictorama, Lincoln On the Hudson,

which captures a moment in Westchester

6 7Red Grooms. The Bookstore, 1978-79. Restored 2007-08. Detail

Explore the Civil War : The ArtistRed Grooms has been a fixture at the Hudson River Museum since 1979, beginning with his installation The Bookstore.

A

cultural icon since

the Pop Art move-

ment of the 1960s,

Grooms has, for

50 years, brought

life from city and country to sculpture and

canvas, with truth that he inflects with

both compassion and humor. His paintings

and sculpture — full of color, verve, and

theatricality — have immediate impact and

accessibility. From The City of Chicago in

1967 to Ruckus Manhattan in 1975, Grooms

perfected increasingly complex environ-

ments, which he called sculpto-pictoramas.

He designed The Bookstore to function both

as an artwork and the Museum’s gift shop,

modeling its facades and interiors on the

Red Grooms. Chicago Billboard, 1968, Detail

Pierpont Morgan Library and Mendoza’s

Book Company in Lower Manhattan.

In 2008 Grooms and painter Tom

Burckhardt collaborated on The Bookstore

restoration and re-installation in the

collection galleries.

The fantastical appearance of much

of Grooms’s work belies his profound sense

of the real and his love of history. All his

sculpto-pictoramas aim to evoke the feeling

of place, and the artist spends countless

hours sketching on the spot or researching

what can no longer be seen. In 1968 Grooms

included a vignette of Abraham Lincoln

debating Stephen Douglas in The City of

Chicago, and a 25-foot Lincoln dominated

his outdoor Chicago Billboard. Now his

interest in this great president comes full

circle with his latest sculpto-pictorama,

Lincoln On the Hudson.

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Explore the Civil War : The Themes

When we look at the Civil War, we come face to face with people

whose lives affected and were affected by the conflict.

The spatial

impact of Grooms’s

large-scale work,

Lincoln On the Hudson,

makes it visceral as well

as visual. Grooms’s

viewers become, in

a sense, part of his

artwork. Grooms said,

In many ways the

visitor to the piece

actually becomes the

true figurative element,

which wasn’t exactly what I intended. Ideally, I would have liked a crowd of living people

wearing makeup and costumes I designed, instead of the real crowd in an unreal set with

dummies mixed in.

Seven Southern states

had already seceded by the

time Lincoln spoke at Peek-

skill, 85 years after this union

of states was founded, …in

regard to the difficulties that

lie before me and our beloved

country, that if I can only be as

generously and unanimously

sustained as the demonstra-

tions I have witnessed indicate I

shall be, I shall not fail … .

Like the Westchester crowd surround-

ing Lincoln, we sense the excitement and

apprehension of that moment in our collec-

tive history.

In the exhibition Who Fought to Save

the Union, the Museum’s collections person-

alize the conflict with artifacts that belonged

to local residents — from a soldier’s appoint-

ment to the New-York State Infantry, which

was signed by President Lincoln, to veterans’

reunion ribbons, to toys and objects for

the home.

In The Blue and The

Gray you see

portraits of Union

generals Grant,

Sherman, and Custer

as well as Confederate

generals, among them

Lee and Jackson. Other

faces are those of polit-

ical leaders, soldiers in

the ranks, and femme

fatale spies for both

sides. A small poignant

painting of black sol-

diers is titled Group of

Contrabands, the term

for people who escaped

slavery to reach Union

lines. Another painting

shows black soldiers at

the Union garrison at

Fort Negley.

Chess and Checker Board with Abraham Lincoln and Union Military Leaders, 1862

Red Grooms. Major General Custer, 1999

Pauline Cushman, Actress and Union Spy, 2010

Red Grooms. Part of the Federal Garrison at Fort Negley, Nashville, 2014

Red Grooms. Lincoln On the Hudson, 2016, Detail

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Slavery and Reconstruction

Slavery is woven into the history of our nation.

1807, the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1797 and

1850 sought to preserve slavery and the

position of slaveholders in the face of the

growing reservations of residents in some

Northern states.

At the onset of the Civil War in

1861 there were 3.5 million slaves in the

South, out of a total population of nearly 9

million. Roughly one third of the South’s

families counted human beings among

their property holdings. By the end of the

war, approximately 200,000 African Amer-

icans had served in the Union’s Army and

Navy. Reflecting on their military service,

African American social reformer, Frederick

Douglass, an abolitionist, orator, writer, and

statesman, who had himself escaped slavery

said, Once let the black man get upon his

person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an

eagle on his button, and a musket on his

shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is

no power on earth that can deny that he has

earned the right to citizenship.

Immediately following the war,

Congress, populated solely by representatives

from the North, imposed a series of re-

quirements on the South known as Recon-

struction. These regulations were meant to

create a path for Southern states to rejoin the

Union but were more often perceived as a

means of control and restitution for the war.

Southern states, fueled by resentment, began

passing Black Codes that were intended to

return freed slaves to an approximation of

their former condition of enslavement. Pres-

ident Andrew Johnson, Southern Democrat

and former slaveholder, attempted to block

the progress of Reconstruction and was

impeached in 1868 as a result. He escaped

being convicted in the Senate by one vote

and served out his term.

The Compromise of 1877 enabled Re-

publican Rutherford B. Hayes to assume the

Presidency in exchange for withdrawing the

Federal troops remaining in the South, thus

the Reconstruction Era formally came to an

end. Politicians in the South then imposed a

new system of white supremacy in the form of

Jim Crow laws. Though the Union had been

preserved, the burning promise of the Civil

War, ennobled by terrible sacrifice, would

become “a dream deferred.”

Enslaved people were brought to

Jamestown, Virginia as early as 1619

by Dutch traders to help produce lu-

crative crops, like tobacco. Slavery became

a legally recognized institution in all 13

colonies. In 1776 the Declaration of Inde-

pendence asserted that, All men are created

equal, but this was not the case. Slave codes

enacted by colonial assemblies continued to

restrict the liberty of enslaved peoples and

protect slavery. Our early leaders left the

problem for subsequent generations, unsure

how to resolve the issue. Thomas Jefferson,

himself a slaveholder, said, …as it is, we

have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither

hold him, nor safely let him go. While a ban

on the importation of slaves was passed in

Red Grooms. Frederick Douglass 1818-1895, 2009

TOP, Sojourner Truth, 2016

Red Grooms. Old Times Not Forgotten, 2009Two Abolitionists Who Spoke Out

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Interpreting History

Artists and photographers show us things we otherwise could

not see, so we may transcend space or even time. Advances

in printing, distribution, and in photography brought the war

home to an unprecedented degree.

Red Grooms. General Ord and Family, 2010

The press barraged readers with illus-

trated magazines and newspapers.

Photographer Mathew Brady left us

unforgettable images of the conflict but it

was artists and illustrators who captured

action scenes in wood engravings that could

now be easily and economically reproduced

on the printing press.

For several of his

paintings, Grooms was

inspired by Brady’s

photographs, as in the portrait

of General Ord and his family.

foot in North America, within reach of every man, regardless of race, color, or previous

condition of servitude. The nation hoped to redeem itself with the three Reconstruc-

tion Amendments — Thirteenth in 1865, Fourteenth in 1868, and Fifteenth in 1870 —

which abolished slavery, granted birthright citizenship and equal protection under the

law, and the right to vote to those freed from slavery. More laws, too, were enacted to

enforce these guarantees.

Despite these measures, the Jim Crow laws of the South codified white suprem-

acy and enforced racial segregation throughout the first half of the 20th century. The

Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which took the Civil

Rights Act of 1875 as its model, banned discrimination in public accommodations and

the segregation of schools, among other provisions. This landmark law followed in the

wake of protests from the African American community and its leaders, such as Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. In the South, Jim Crow laws legalized economic, educational,

and social disadvantages. In the North de facto segregation often prevailed, supporting

discrimination in housing, banking, and employment practices. As late as 1985, in

Yonkers, Federal Judge Leonard B. Sand’s desegregation order was a response to the

findings of de facto segregation in Yonkers’ public housing practices.

Resonance of the

Civil War

One hundred and fifty years ago,

at the close of the Civil War, it

looked as if our nation’s founding

truths, . . . that all men are created

equal, that they are endowed by

their Creator with certain un-

alienable Rights, that among these

are Life, Liberty and the pursuit

of Happiness . . . were, for the

first time since Europeans set

Thomas Nast. Emancipation — The Past and the Future. Harper’s Weekly, January 24, 1863

Mathew Brady. General Ord and Family, 1860-1865