It's rare that one museum exhibition can credibly include the works of major artists like Mark Rothko, Hans Hoffmann, Charles Burchfield, Dennis Oppenheim, and Philip Pearlstein and other lesser known talents under one theme. But that's exactly what the Montclair Art Museum's "Engaging with Nature: American and Native American Artists 1200 A.D. – 2004" does with both style and intelligence.  

Co-curated by MAM's Twig Johnson, senior curator of Native American art, and Gail Stavitsky, chief curator, "Engaging with Nature " is a mini blockbuster providing so many delights for the eye, mind, and spirit it deserves to be seen more than once. 

According to the curators "Engaging With Nature" … "is the first exhibition ever presented by the museum to integrate American and Native American art from the collection from all time periods and around a central theme. More than half of the nearly 40 works have never or rarely been displayed."

Nature, of course, has been a subject of art since art began. Prehistoric cave paintings done 35,000 years ago are observations of nature as were the earliest non-utilitarian decorative objects made of bone, animal horns, or antlers. So this exhibition can be seen as being a part of that tradition, a continuation of a dialogue between artists and the meaning of their surroundings that has been going on almost forever.

The exhibition contains paintings, prints, sculpture, ceramics, and utilitarian objects that display an incredible variation of style, approach, and attitude towards nature. For an abstract painter like Hoffmann the artist doesn't seek to interpret nature. Rather the artist creates its equivalent primarily through the use of color. For an artist like Birchfield nature is a living breathing wonder of endless variety and magic. And for Rothko, represented here by an early work, nature is the power of ritual that art can interpret through images and symbols. 

You'd be right to conclude an exhibition focused on nature would include landscapes and this show has its share. The show divides the landscapes geographically, between east and west, and it's interesting to note how the experience of the region influenced the artists. Ralph Albert Blakelock and Charles Warren Eaton working in the eastern United States produce mysterious evocations that project a largely domesticated natural world but one possessed with a secret inner life. While Thomas Moran and Albert Lorey Groll working decades later in the Southwest produce big, bold, expansive scenes in which the landscape seems to say I dare you to tame me. 

One of the great pleasures of this exhibition, at least for me, was to discover wonderfully imaginative, creative, and sure-footed artists whose work I didn't know. Two notable examples are Emmi Whitehorse and James Lavadour. 

Whitehorse's "Blackwater" is a lovely abstract work. Simultaneously delicate and bold, it has all the power of a fine Miro. Positioned close to the ancestral Puebloan vessels dating from 1200 A.D. her work echoes a respect for nature that is an important part of the earlier native work. James Lavadours "Plateau Walla Walla" on the other hand much like the landscapes of Groll and Moran makes the case for the power of nature, at times contained but in the long run unbowed.  

If the show has any missteps it might be in some of the newer photographic work that may be a bit too intellectual. While thinking is crucial to the creation of any work of art, when it comes to nature it's equally important to feel and to look. 

"Engaging with Nature: American and Native American Artists 1200 A.D. – 2004"

Through September 25, 2011

The Montclair Art Museum is located at 3 South Mountain Avenue in Montclair, N.J. Information and directions are available on the Museum Web site, www.montclairartmuseum.org, or by calling 973-746-5555. MAM is open Wednesdays through Sundays, Noon – 5 p.m., and closed on Mondays, Tuesdays, and major holidays. Museum admission is $12 for nonmember adults, $10 for senior citizens and students with I.D., and free for members and children under 12.