Brandywine Museum of Art to present "Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth"
On view June 22–September 28, 2025
Chadds Ford, PA, June 4, 2025— Opening at the Brandywine Museum of Art this summer, Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth brings together some of the artist’s most iconic works featuring the landscape, buildings, and inhabitants of Kuerner Farm in Chadds Ford, PA. Now a National Historic Landmark owned and operated by the Brandywine, Kuerner Farm inspired nearly 1,000 artworks by Andrew Wyeth in a wide variety of genres and media. Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm is the first focused exhibition on this defining subject, surveying the artist’s sustained engagement with the site over the span of seven decades. This nationally traveling exhibition—co-organized by the Brandywine and the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, NC—has been years in the making and features nearly 50 paintings, including major works loaned from both private and public collections nationwide, as well as previously unexhibited works that will be new to public display. The exhibition will be on view at the Brandywine from June 22 through September 28, 2025, before traveling to its third and final venue later in the fall.
Kuerner Farm stands a short walk from Andrew Wyeth’s Chadds Ford studio—also a National Historic Landmark owned and operated by the Brandywine. Through many years of immersion in this landscape, walking and sketching and gradually earning the trust of the Kuerner family, the artist gained unusual access to the property, inside and out, and took sustained inspiration from the layers of this landscape, the evocative farmhouse at its heart, and the people who lived and worked there. “Visitors to the exhibition will be immersed in this multi-decade story of Wyeth’s engagement with the Kuerner Farm. Through this journey it becomes apparent that this was the place where key tenets of Wyeth’s practice crystallized, including the self-limited palette and geographic range that served as gateways to his distinct mode of modernism,” said William L. Coleman, Ph.D., co-curator of the exhibition and the Brandywine Museum of Art’s Wyeth Foundation Curator and Director of the Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center. “Inspired by a significant but little-known watercolor of the pond found on the Kuerner property—a mysterious feature that the artist once called ‘the eye of the Earth’—this exhibition also marks 25 years of public access to the site through the Brandywine.”
Wyeth’s depictions of Kuerner Farm included some of his most iconic masterworks in his career in both tempera and watercolor. Highlights in the exhibition include the temperas Karl (1948), Groundhog Day (1959), and Snow Hill (1989), along with watercolor masterpieces like Evening at Kuerners (1970), Wolf Moon (1975), and Loden Coat (1978). “Kuerner Farm completely captivated Wyeth,” said Allison C. Slaby, Reynolda’s curator and the exhibition’s co-curator. “In his depictions of the farm, we gain a sense of the Kuerner world in its entirety: the land, the hill, the pond, the house, and its inhabitants. For decades, Wyeth had free rein at this singular place. It became for him ‘a world of his own.’ This exhibition presents a refreshed approach to these works, centering this iconic place that not only captured the fascination of one of America’s most notable painters, but that also held his love and affection over the course of his life.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a generously illustrated hardcover catalogue published by Rizzoli Electa, supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Like the exhibition itself, the catalogue gives a thorough examination of Wyeth’s connection to Kuerner Farm with essays from the exhibition co-curators, Coleman and Slaby, as well as contributions by Karen Baumgartner, Collection Manager in the Brandywine’s Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center, and artist James Welling.
Following its presentation at the Brandywine, Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth will travel to the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida—the exhibition’s third and final venue—where it will be on view October 25, 2025–February 15, 2026. Generous support for the exhibition is provided by national sponsor Wells Fargo, with additional support for the exhibition and its publication provided by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.
About the Brandywine Museum of Art:
The Brandywine Museum of Art features an outstanding collection of American art housed in a 19th-century Mill building with a dramatic steel and glass addition overlooking the banks of the Brandywine Creek. The Museum is located on Route 1 in Chadds Ford, PA. Current admission rates and hours of operation can be found at www.brandywine.org/hours. Guided tours of the Andrew Wyeth Studio, N.C. Wyeth House & Studio and the Kuerner Farm—all National Historic Landmarks—are available seasonally (for an additional fee); advance reservations are recommended. For more information, call 610.388.2700 or visit brandywine.org/museum. The Museum is one of the two programs of the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art.
About the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art:
The Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art preserves and promotes the natural and cultural connections between the area’s beautiful landscape, historic sites and important artists. The Conservancy protects the lands and waters throughout the Brandywine Valley and other priority conservation areas, developing sustainable approaches to emerging needs and assuring preservation of majestic open spaces and protection of natural resources for generations to come. The Museum of Art presents and collects historic and contemporary works of American art, engaging and exciting visitors of all ages through an array of exhibitions and programs. The Brandywine unites the inspiring experiences of art and nature, enhancing the quality of life in its community and among its diverse audiences.
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