Louise Nevelson
American, 1899 - 1988
Distant Land, 1956
Medium: Wood painted black
Dimensions: 22 1/4 x 50 x 8 1/4 in
Accession Number: 2000.24.14
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Lillian Rojtman Berkman and the Sybiel B. Berkman Foundation

Medium: Wood painted black
Dimensions: 22 1/4 x 50 x 8 1/4 in
Accession Number: 2000.24.14
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Lillian Rojtman Berkman and the Sybiel B. Berkman Foundation
Label: By the time Nevelson mounted her 1956 exhibition The Royal Voyage (of the King and Queen of the Sea), she had eliminated from her sculpture any direct resemblance to human or landscape figures. At the same time, however, she presented her new abstract sculptures as elements within loosely defined mythological narratives that imbued these scavenged-wood assemblages with the sense of an epic romance or quest. For instance, Nevelson originally installed The King and The Queen at opposite ends of a gallery, and between them she arranged other non-figurative sculptures, including Distant Land and The Chief. Evocative of innumerable folktales, the sculptures’ titles characterized them as people or places equally at home in a North American saga or one set in Nevelson’s native Ukraine. Exhibition label from " The Big 4-0: New Views of the Collection, Vol. 2" 2025.
Exhibition History: The Haggerty Collects: Recent Gifts, Haggerty Museum of Art, 12/07/2000 - 02/11/2001 Motherwell, Nevelson and Frankenthaler: Gifts from the Lillian Rojtman Berkman Collection, Haggerty Museum of Art, 02/22/2001 - 05/20/2001 The Big 4-0, Vol. 2: New Views of the Collection, Haggerty Museum of Art, 01/17/2025 - 05/24/2025