The Woodstock School of Art is presenting “In the Open Air: The Art Students League’s Woodstock School of Landscape Painting and Its Impact,” organized in conjunction with the celebration of the Art Students League of New York’s 150th anniversary.
The exhibition, curated by American art historian Dr. Bruce Weber, will feature approximately fifty paintings drawn primarily from local private collections and institutions. Over the past several years, Weber has focused on expanding knowledge of the historic Woodstock art colony, with particular attention to its enduring role in American landscape painting.
“In the Open Air” centers in the early decades of the 20th century, when the Art Students League operated a summer school in Woodstock in Ulster County, NY, from 1906 to 1922 and later from 1947 to 1979.
Founded by artist L. Birge Harrison (1854-1929) and continued under his student John F. Carlson (1874-1945), the Woodstock School of Landscape Painting was the first serious professional art school in the United States wholly devoted to teaching landscape art.
Dedicated almost exclusively to working outdoors, the school produced an outstanding group of painters, many still understudied today. These artists exhibited nationally and helped establish The Woodstock Colony as one of the leading creative centers in the American art world.
The exhibition celebrates the League’s major contributions to early twentieth-century. Highlights include the work and influence of key participants in the Woodstock school; the evolving aesthetic directions and practices of the period; and the emergence of more radical approaches to landscape painting during and after the Armory Show of 1913.
A concluding section tracing how the work of the early Woodstock painters inspired the League’s later summer sessions in Woodstock, and how that legacy continues to resonate today.
This exhibition runs from October 11 through December 13, 2025, with an opening reception on Saturday, October 11, from 2 until 4 pm.
Woodstock School of Art is located at 2470 Route 212, in Woodstock, Ulster County, NY. Call (845) 679-2388 or visit their website for more information..
Illustration: Robert Angeloch’s “June, 1975” (Collection of The Woodstock School of Art).
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