Defining Landscapes
May 2 through July 26, 2026
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale presents Defining Landscapes, an exhibition of works from the permanent collection, mounted in celebration of the newly restored Huizenga Park, located across the street from the Museum on East Las Olas Boulevard.
Depictions of the natural world have been a constant throughout the history of images, but it was during the 16th century Northern Renaissance that the word landscape (derived from the Dutch landschap) came to be recognized as a subject worthy of art. In the 17th century, French painters such as Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain brought a sublime grandeur to the subject, endowing it with rich symbolism. In their epic scenes, forests, mountains, clouds, and thunder boldly represented the ebbs and flows of human progress. The early modern painters who followed pushed further, outside the studio and into nature itself, working en plein air, sketching and painting outside, immersed in their subject, capturing the essence of nature through immediate observation.
The works on view in this exhibition represent the ways artists, in the wake of this history, have perceived nature. In a world in which reality is increasingly filtered through modes of detachment, the landscape comes to represent vitality with heightened significance. Through this exhibition, we may come to acknowledge the changing definition of landscape in our post-industrial present, question how we each relate to the outside world, and consider the ways in which authentic experience can still be found in nature.
