Beautiful, bountiful: America

Mother's birthday? Nephew's graduation? Second cousin twice removed's wedding? If you need help selecting a gift for any occasion, you've come to the right place. What gift is always the right color, the right size, and the right price? Why, books, of course!

REVIEWS BY MIRIAM DRENNAN

The Smithsonian American Art Museum was in need of restoration, a project that would take an estimated three years. How can a major museum that welcomes an average of 500,000 guests each year simply close its doors -- for three years? The solution was phenomenal: Bring art to the people.

The Smithsonian is touring eight exhibitions known as Treasures to Go, which will travel nationwide through the year 2002. The good folks at Watson-Guptill have published companion volumes, known as the Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum series, that will serve as the official catalogs for each exhibit.

The two latest offerings in this series are The Gilded Age and Lure of the West. The Gilded Age -- which is widely recognized as the period from the late decades of the 1800s to the early decades of the 1900s -- includes pieces that reflect a common theme of idealism in a variety of styles and compositions. The book, aptly named for this period, includes flowery, billowy, Renaissance-inspired (yet less buxom) paintings by Frank Benson and Abbott Handerson Thayer to William Ordway Partridge's sculptures, which hint at impressionism. What remains consistent throughout each piece featured in The Gilded Age is a sense of the ideal, whether it is reflected in terms of death, age, landscape, romance, or exotic cultures. The artists of this period enjoyed prosperous commissions from their industrialist patrons, who sought to capture their newfound wealth and establish their positions in the arts. Nearly a century later, the spoils are definitely ours to savor.

The second offering, Lure of the West, covers works from the 1820s to the 1940s that feature changing attitudes toward American Indian cultures and frontier expansion. Look on Albert Bierstadt's Sunrise in the Sierras as the early morning sun's orange glow awakens the mountaintops; George Catlin's portraits of Native Americans show a people united in pride and respect, but each maintains a distinct personality. Not only are distinct personalities found in the subjects, but also in the artists themselves; one need only look at the contrast between Eanger Irving Couse's lifelike renderings and William Panhallow Henderson's simplistic, blocky shapes and colors to see that this period is rich in perspective.

Each book is priced at an affordable $19.95, and any or all would make wonderful gifts, particularly if the gift included a trip to one of the dozens of museums hosting the actual exhibits.


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