Works from TMA’s collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art are now on view in the SANAA-designed Glass Pavilion on the museum’s campus . Paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the 1870s to the 1920s showcase the spectrum of artistic production in Europe and the United States as well as the importance of Japanese art for Western artists in this period.

The late 1800s and early 1900s were a vibrant period of artistic inquiry and innovation. A new generation of artists rejected tradition and depicted new subject matter in radically new ways. They sought to capture the transient nature of light and its effects on surfaces. Art was made in nature, and artists grappled with how it could reflect and represent nature. Thanks to the openness of SANAA’s glass architecture, with sight lines through layers of transparent walls, visitors can experience these artworks, which were shaped by light and nature, in an architectural setting itself shaped by light and nature for the first time.

Europe, the US, and Japan were deeply interconnected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many American artists traveled to Europe to study and work, and both American and European artists were deeply impressed and influenced by Japanese art. Accordingly, works by American artists and their European contemporaries appear with select Japanese works (prints, glass, ceramics, and lacquer) to illustrate the deep resonance that these works had in Europe and North America.

This exhibition will be on view in the Glass Pavilion through June 2025.