USGA Museum Features 'Art of the Golf Course' Exhibition

As part of its ongoing commitment to celebrating golf’s rich history and elevating excellence in the game in all forms, the USGA has produced The Art of the Golf Course, an exhibition that examines golf through art, challenging viewers to expand their perspective on the game beyond a linear journey from tee to green.

The exhibition, which will be on display at the USGA Golf Museum through August 2020, uses a selection of the Museum’s exceptional fine art collection to showcase diverse artistic interpretations of the golf course.

Although golf course architecture is most often discussed through the lens of designing a playing field, viewers can identify in any golf course the formal elements of line, shape, form, tone, texture, pattern, color and composition found in all works of art.

“Visitors to this exhibition will draw parallels between the choices made by artists and those of golf course architects, whether to create playing interest and challenge, or visual interest and beauty, enhancing their appreciation and understanding of the golf course as a work of art,” said Hilary Cronheim, director of the USGA Golf Museum.

Curated by Rand Jerris, the USGA’s senior managing director of Public Services and former director of the Museum, the exhibition showcases a variety of innovative perspectives through paintings, prints, drawings, photography and sculpture. The exhibition features pieces by those who identify purely as artists, such as the panoramic images by photographer John Yang, bronze sculptures of green complexes by Henry Whiting II, and the energetic drawings of illustrator Franklin Booth, as well as artwork by golf course architects, including a rare watercolor by A.W. Tillinghast and a selection of controversial and fantastical drawings by Desmond Muirhead. Many of the exhibition’s Muirhead sketches, which represent the intersection of architecture, culture and mythology with golf course design, are on public display for the first time, having been donated to the USGA Golf Museum in 2014.

Images From The Art of the Golf Course Exhibition

The USGA Golf Museum’s exhibition, “The Art of the Golf Course,” encourages viewers to consider golf course architecture as an art form, as an analog to landscape architecture, in which design choices are made for aesthetic reasons as well as functional purposes. The exhibition is an examination of art, through art, challenging viewers to expand their perspective on golf as linear journey from tee to green. Here, a guest admires celebrated New York photographer John Yang’s panoramic images of National Golf Links of America and Merion Golf Club, showing the artist’s perspective on golf courses as a 360-degree view. (USGA/Steve Boyle)

On display is Yang’s Cirkut No. 10 Panoramic Camera, ca. 1903, used by the artist to photograph more than 60 East Coast golf courses during the late 1980s. The antique camera produced exquisitely focused panoramic images representing the golf course as surface, not simply line of play.

Rand Jerris, senior managing director of Public Services for the USGA and curator of “The Art of the Golf Course,” encourages guests to consider the artistic choices made by each artist to enhance one’s understanding and appreciation of the golf course as a work of art. (USGA/Steve Boyle)

Guests discuss a collection of Lee Wybranski paintings that show cropped, aerial views of iconic golf holes. Though Wybranski typically uses watercolor, for this abstract series he turned to acrylic as a medium that offered greater flexibility in representing the varied textures of the golf course – green and rough, bunker and sand. (USGA/Steve Boyle)

Guests view the art of Kanemichi Yamada, a Japanese photographer fascinated by the intersection of golf and the Japanese landscape, particularly in the work of legendary golf course architect Charles Hugh Alison and Japanese architect Seiichi Inoue. (USGA/Steve Boyle)

On display is Golden Age golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast’s 1936 design sketch for Fenway Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. This piece reflects the long tradition of watercolor as a preferred medium of building and landscape architects, allowing for quick sketches that convey design intent, yet with enough detail to inform eventually a construction crew.

From the late 18th century to the early 20th century, British artists preferred transparent watercolor for rendering landscapes, as it supported a dynamic range of color and a high level of detail that helped locate a scene in a specific place and time. On display is Chris Meadows’ representation of the golf course at Routenburn, Scotland, designed by five-time British Open champion James Braid, which opened in 1914.

In contrast to other watercolorists, Harry Rountree with his 1910 depiction of Sheringham Golf Club pushes the boundaries toward abstraction, rendering the fairway as a near vertical playing surface in order to emphasize the seaside cliffs that dominate the local landscape. It is the impression of golf at Sheringham, rather than the course itself, that is the true subject of the scene.

Idaho artist Henry Whiting’s dramatic representations of green complexes capture the undulating surfaces, sculptural plasticity and varied textures of the golf course in rich detail. As golfers and as viewers, we can read every break in the undulating surfaces of his slick putting greens. (USGA/Steve Boyle)

Despite the challenge of conveying the rich palette of golf while working in black and white, the lines in Franklin Booth’s "The Punch Bowl," are energetic, staccato strokes that convey the energy of the game, the drama of a landscape and the excitement of the opening of a landmark golf course. This piece was created in anticipation of the 1911 debut of the National Golf Links of America, C.B. Macdonald’s masterpiece at the eastern end of Long Island.

“The Art of the Golf Course” exhibition features examples of golf course architect and artist Desmond Muirhead’s most daring and creative visions. Displayed publicly for the first time, we see in these drawings the notion of the golf course as a work of art, as a form of landscape sculpture, pushed to the extreme. The last phase of Muirhead’s career, beginning in the early 1990s up until his death in 2002, produced his most daring and controversial designs for clients in Japan, Indonesia and Southeast Asia, such as the “Demon Hole,” pictured here.

Muirhead saw the golf course as a canvas for reflecting the intersections of culture, history and sport. Golf did not exist as an isolated activity in his mind, but rather as an extension of (and perhaps even as an element of) cultural heritage and traditions. Pictured here is Muirhead’s personal reproduction of Hokusai’s “Great Wave,” which served as inspiration for a commission near Mt. Fuji in Japan.

Muirhead was, in all respects, a student of culture, who rigorously studied the artistic, architectural, literary, mythological and even theatrical traditions of the regions in which he worked. His designs often reflected his learnings, as we see him invoking the apsaras and devata of Angkor Wat for a design in Cambodia; Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel for a course outside Florence, Italy; or Hokusai’s “Great Wave” for a commission near Mt. Fuji in Japan.

The imitation of natural forms in architecture is a practice that dates back several millennia to the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman worlds, where artists adopted both the form and function of plants and plant materials in their building designs. The practice was equally prevalent in Islamic, Asian and Southeast Asian architecture, where images of plants and animals were embraced as representations of earthly paradise. Muirhead understood and embraced both the Western and Eastern practices of biomimicry, in particular embracing animal imagery specific to the site.

Rand Jerris, senior managing director of Public Services for the USGA and curator of the exhibition, addresses attendees during “The Art of the Golf Course” opening reception at the USGA Golf Museum in Liberty Corner, N.J., on Sept. 13, 2019. (USGA/Steve Boyle)

photo gallery Images From The Art of the Golf Course Exhibition

The Art of the Golf Course displays a fraction of the USGA Golf Museum’s world-class collection of fine art, which consists of approximately 1,000 pieces thoughtfully amassed since 1939. The Museum’s fine art collection started with an oil painting of John Reid, “The Father of American Golf,” created by an unknown American artist around 1898.

The fine art collection includes pieces by renowned painters Allan Stewart, Charles Hopkinson, Sir John Lavery, Thomas E. Stephens, Norman Rockwell and Will Barnet, as well as President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Works by Edwin Everett Codman, Ed Dwight, David Jones and Eleanor Mellon are part of the Museum’s collection of sculpture. The Museum’s vast photo collection contains images spanning over 150 years as well as contemporary examples of fine art photographs, including portraits by George Pietzcker and John Yang’s panoramic images, which are featured in the current exhibition. The Museum’s collection of prints and drawings contains some of the best-known artists and illustrators in the history of art, including Rembrandt van Rijn, Edward Penfield, Harrison Fisher, Charles Dana Gibson, Harry Rountree, A.B. Frost, James Montgomery Flagg and Charles Schulz. The collection also includes artists celebrated for their contributions to the art of golf, such as Anthony Ravielli, Arthur Weaver, Desmond Muirhead, LeRoy Neiman and A.W. Tillinghast.

The exhibit is made possible through donations of artwork from private collectors as well as USGA supporters who have a passion for preserving golf’s heritage through philanthropic giving.

The USGA Golf Museum is the oldest sports museum in the nation and contains the world’s largest and most significant collection of golf history. Since 1936, the USGA Golf Museum has collected and protected the treasures of the game, connecting golfers, sports fans and scholars with remarkable artifacts, documents, stories and images that chronicle the rich history of golf.

The Museum is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. To learn more, visit usga.org/museum. To support the USGA’s efforts to preserve and celebrate the history of the game, visit the USGA Foundation Homepage.

USGA Museum Features 'Art of the Golf Course' Exhibition

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