The Finer Part of Our Nature

Helen Munson Williams and The Utica Art Association

On view through fall 2026
Museum of Art | 1 South Gallery
Free

Some of the greatest American paintings in the Munson collection once belonged to Helen Munson Williams, including Frederic Edwin Church’s Sunset (1856). The Finer Part of Our Nature explores Williams’s collection and her relationship with the Utica Art Association, the organization which brought major American artists including Church and their work to Utica. Williams’s impact on the city was once described as cultivating “the highest artistic and finer part of our natures.” Come see the fruits of that labor in this new installation organized in concert with the international celebration of the 200th anniversary of Frederic Church’s birth: Church 200.