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Matthew Northridge, “Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea,” 2007, mixed media, 10 by 10 by 15 inches, will be shown in the invitational exhibition of contemporary American art May 29–September 7.

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From the “Metropolis” exhibition October 2–January 4, will be Guy Carleton Wiggins (NA) “Manhattan,” 1929, oil on canvas, 30 by 60 inches.

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NATIONAL ACADEMY MUSEUM ANNOUNCES EXHIBITIONS w/2 cuts

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NEW YORK CITY — The National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts announces upcoming exhibitions for spring through fall.

The exhibition “183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art” will be on view May 29–September 7. In its 183rd year, the National Academy Museum continues to be a forum of innovation by offering its biennial nonmember invitational exhibition.

This year, the academy puts forth a selection of contemporary works by more than 125 of the finest artists from across the country. Selections were made from 400-plus recommended artists submitted for consideration and chosen by a curatorial committee comprised of a panel of seven prominent National Academicians.

Offering an opportunity for diversity of techniques and styles, the annual exhibition consists largely of works by newly emerging artists, as well as established painters, printmakers, sculptors, installation artists, photographers and architects.

Some of the artists included are Lisha Bai, Jose Bedia, Leonardo Drew, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Steven Holl, Ben La Rocco, Eve Olitski, Cynthia Lin, Sean Scully, James Wines and Betty Woodman.

“George Tooker: A Retrospective” will be on view October 2–January 4. The artist’s first museum retrospective in three decades, the exhibit will provide a comprehensive examination of his place in American art and reveal the full scope of his achievement.

Jointly organized by the National Academy Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Columbus Museum of Art, the exhibition will bring together approximately 60 paintings and drawings made since 1945. In his work, Tooker (b 1920) has examined human experiences of love, death, aging, isolation, alienation and grief in many works of the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1970s his work has evinced broader humanistic notions of hope and optimism.

Additionally, the exhibition contains a substantial selection of Tooker’s working drawings, rarely exhibited and largely concentrated in the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, allowing viewers and fascinating glimpse in to the artist’s working methods. A fully illustrated catalog will accompany the exhibition.

“Metropolis,” on view October 2–January 4, explores the city, a subject for American artists since the early Nineteenth Century, from the sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline, to the assorted denizens in enclaves of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

Divided thematically into groupings that illustrate the ways in which artists and architects have depicted, constructed and interpreted various physical and social aspects of the city, “Metropolis” will bring together approximately 60 works from the academy’s collections.

The exhibition will be hung densely with scenes of labor and leisure juxtaposed against those of arterial trains and waterways of New York, San Francisco and cities in between. Street scenes and architectural depictions highlight both the social and physical changes of the urban American landscape. Through paintings, drawings, prints and architectural renderings and photographs, “Metropolis” will weave a cloth of broad historical and pictorial interest showing how the urban landscape has become central to the artist’s oeuvre for more than 100 years.

“The Unknown Blakelock (1847–1919)” will be on view September 25–January 4. Organized by the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska, this exhibition consists of approximately 45 works by the American visionary landscape painter Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919). The artist had strong ties to the National Academy and beginning in 1868, he exhibited regularly at the National Academy’s annual exhibition.

He was elected an associate member in 1913 and a full Academician three years later. Blakelock’s haunting paintings, drawn from his imagination, were publicly recognized only just before his death. In turn, over the course of the last century his paint handling and treatment of space have had a profound influence on modern and contemporary painters.

This exhibition will enlarge the view of Blakelock’s aesthetic achievement beyond the moonlight and encampment scenes for which he is best known. It is organized by theme, and features representative examples of some of his best known paintings, as well as samples of different aspects of his work: Western landscapes, Native American subjects, Jamaican landscapes, shanty scenes, seascapes, still lifes and imaginary/fantasy compositions.

For additional information, www.nationalacademy.org or 212-369-4880.