Helen Munson Williams and The Utica Art Association

The Finer Part of Our Nature

On view through fall 2026
Museum of Art | 1 South Gallery
Free

Some of the greatest American paintings in the Munson collection once belonged to Helen Munson Williams, including Frederic Edwin Church’s Sunset (1856). The Finer Part of Our Nature explores Williams’s collection and her relationship with the Utica Art Association, the organization which brought major American artists including Church and their work to Utica. Williams’s impact on the city was once described as cultivating “the highest artistic and finer part of our natures.” Come see the fruits of that labor in this new installation organized in concert with the international celebration of the 200th anniversary of Frederic Church’s birth: Church 200.

2026 marks the 200th anniversary of Frederic Church, America’s greatest landscape artist. Some of Munson’s finest American paintings once belonged to Helen Munson Williams, including Church’s Sunset (1856). The Finer Part of Our Nature highlights Williams’s collection and her connection to the Utica Art Association, which brought major American artists, including Church, to Utica. Williams’s influence on the city was described as cultivating “the highest artistic and finer part of our natures.” See the results of her vision in this new installation, presented alongside the international celebration of Church’s 200th anniversary: Church 200.