New Curator Appointed to Manage Abby Williams Hill Collection
January 9, 2007
Tacoma, Wash. – University of Puget Sound is pleased to announce Andrea E. Moody as the new consultant for the Abby Williams Hill Collection.
As consultant, Moody is responsible for the preservation and exhibition of the collection, which includes paintings, drawings, letters, and ephemera of the celebrated landscape painter.
Most recently the owner of Andrea Moody Fine Art Appraisals, Moody previously worked for several well-known galleries in Seattle and New York City, including the Donald Young Gallery. She earned a master’s degree in art history at Hunter College of the City University of New York and a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
“We were delighted to learn Andrea accepted the position. Puget Sound is extremely fortunate to have the Hill collection. Her expertise and work experience make her the perfect fit for the role,” said John McCuistion, chair of Puget Sound’s Art department.
“Our top priority is to bring Hill’s work to a wider audience,” said Moody. “The collection, which includes landscapes and portraiture, is breathtaking but it has not been widely exhibited in recent years.” She also plans to add to the already substantial online database of paintings and letters and continue an ongoing cleaning and restoration program. 
The White River Valley Museum in Auburn, Wash., is planning an exhibition of Hill’s work that will run from May 30 through Sept. 23, 2007. Galleries or museums interested in hosting an exhibit of the Hill collection should contact Andrea Moody at 253.879.3348 or send an e-mail to amoody@ups.edu.
More about the Hill collection:
Driven by a desire to experience the grandeur of rugged mountains and to paint those vistas, Hill rejected the comforts of home and spent months at a time traveling, often in the wilderness and usually accompanied by her four children. Her oeuvre includes more than one hundred canvases, spanning more than 50 years. Her primary subject was the Western landscape, ranging from the Cascades, Yosemite National Park, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Park to the Southwest scenery of Arizona and southern California's Laguna Beach. She also painted floral compositions and portraits of Sioux, Flathead, Nez Perce, and Yakama Indians.
Hill established her reputation as a professional landscape artist between 1903-1906, having been awarded four major commissions from the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railway companies. As a result, she produced dozens of paintings to extol the beauty of the West. These works were published widely and exhibited at several landmark world's fairs-notably the St. Louis World's Fair, the Lewis and Clark Exposition, and the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.
By special arrangements, Hill was able to keep almost all her commissioned work. Consequently she may be the only railway artist whose professional work is virtually intact, and the Hill collection, which was given to the University of Puget Sound by the Hill family in the 1950s, may well be the only one of its kind in the nation.
When asked why Hill and her art work continue to inspire, Moody replied, “She is important on so many levels. Foremost of course, is the enduring strength and richness of her art. Her personal story, however, is equally compelling. She was extremely progressive in her social views and often forewent the comfort and privilege of life as a surgeon’s wife to satisfy her insatiable love of travel and learning. She was an early and active participant in the Congress of Mothers, a forerunner to the Parent Teacher Association and her writings and travel reveal that she was deeply concerned with poverty and racial inequality.”
More information on the Hill collection is available online. Abby Williams Hill and the Lure of the West by Professor Emeritus Ronald Fields, the most comprehensive book written on the artist, is available in the University of Puget Sound Bookstore.
-0-
CONTACT
mediarelations@ups.edu
253.879.2611
Subscribe to Puget Sound RSS Feeds
