Until a certain point in the twentieth century the majority of people in the world lived on farms. With a vast relocation to urban dwellings came a concomitant need to document this new life, and cityscapes emerged where only landscapes had been before. This has been a cross-disciplinary phenonmenon: one example are the City Symphonies—the name given to films that often abstractly attempted to capture the feel of life in metropolitan settings in the 1920s and 30s. The Fine Arts Collection is particularly rich in its holdings in this often modest yet frequently affecting genre. The staff of the Nelson has selected six of its favorites to share with visitors this summer.

The particularly in-town phenomenon of on-the-street pushcart shopping is captured by both Otis William Oldfield and Henry L. Glintenkamp. Newly citified folks are exposed to culture at the Louvre in Whistler’s etching. While Helen Hokinson depicts a street scene in a New Yorker cartoon satirizing the chauffeur-driven during war time, Ernest Laborde shows a tree-lined street scene in a charming Van Gogh-like style. Finally, contemporary artist Gregory Kondos gives us a dramatic graphite slash of smokestacks seen from a distance, summarizing one reality of the urban experience.