"The Tongue is an Eye": Poetry, the Visual Arts, and Wallace Stevens

Exhibition Website

Jan 11 2019 - Mar 17 2019

From Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant to Jasper Johns and John Yau, American artists and poets have inspired each other. Not only did Wallace Stevens write numerous poems inspired by works of art, his verse in turn has stimulated the creativity of many visual artists. Writing about “The Relations between Poetry and Painting” Stevens notes: “in an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent or, if not disbelief, indifference to questions of belief, poetry and painting, and the arts in general, are, in their measure, a compensation for what has been lost.”

This exhibition explores connections between poetry and visual art by bringing prominent Connecticut poets to mine the collection of the Art Museum for works that they feel capture the spirit of specific poems by Wallace Stevens.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

  • Various Media
  • Various artists

Exhibition Venues & Dates