The Voyage of Life: Art, Allegory, and Community Response

Three centuries of American art come together with community-contributed stories to illuminate life’s most defining moments in The Voyage of Life.

Explore how much of the human experience is held in common with works by artists including Lee Krasner, Robert Colescott, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neel, and Grant Wood.

Select loans from Wake Forest University are on view along with works from Reynolda’s collection of American art, mirroring Winston-Salem’s remarkable collecting legacy. New acquisitions and promised gifts are also featured, demonstrating the Museum’s goal of increasing representation by artists of color.

What’s your story? Use #VoyageofLife and share your life experiences with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for a chance to be featured on #Reynolda’s social channels. Visitors are also invited to connect with each other and share moments from their own lives on the walls outside the Gallery during their visit.

In the online gallery below, view works included in The Voyage of Life from Reynolda’s collection.

Select Artworks

Thomas Cole, engraved by James Smillie, The Voyage of Life: Youth (1854-55), engraving, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse

Kiki Smith, My Blue Lake (1995), Photogravure with lithograph, Wake Forest University General Collection. Donated in honor of Perri and Allie Blitz, children of Catherine Woodard and Nelson Blitz, Jr., © Kiki Smith, Reproduced with permission of the artist and U.L.A.E.

Jasper Francis Cropsey, Mounts Adam and Eve (1872), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse

Eastman Johnson, The Storyteller of the Camp (Maple Sugar Camp) (1861-66), oil on board, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Original Purchase Fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, ARCA, and Anne Cannon Forsyth

Thomas Eakins, A.W. Lee (circa 1905), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Museum Purchase with funds provided by Nancy Susan Reynolds and Barbara B. Millhouse

Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch (1826-30), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse

Thomas Cole, Home in the Woods (1847), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse

Charles Willson Peale, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson (1795), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Joseph Blackburn, Elizabeth Browne Rogers (1761), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Original Purchase Fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, ARCA, and Anne Cannon Forsyth

Artists

Jasper Francis Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt, Josephine Nebitsi (Navajo/Dine), Lee Krasner, Odd Nerdrum, Alice Neel, Romare Bearden, Theresa Smith (Yu’pik), May Stevens, Thomas Hart Benton, Fairfield Porter, Kiki Smith, Julie Moos, Collier Schorr, Andy Warhol, Edith Welch Bradley (Cherokee), n.d. (1975-1995), Pauline Sarracino (Jemez), 1993, Charles Willson Peale, Joseph Blackburn, Kenneth Roberts, Gregory Gillespie, Keith Haring, Thomas Cole, Jacob Lawrence, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Elizabeth Catlett, George Bellows, Jonas Wood, Endia Beal, Edward Hicks, Glenn Ligon, Carter Kustera, Thornton Dial, Arnaldo Roche-Rabell, Lari Pittman, Leonard Baskin, Thomas Eakins, Eastman Johnson, Robert Colescott, Thomas Cole, engraved by James Smillie, Thomas Cole

Installation Photography