Comprised of forty-seven paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, The Abstract Impulse: Fifty Years of Abstraction at the National Academy, 1956-2006 reveals how pervasive abstraction became following mid-century and the myriad ways in which it continues to be a viable and vital artistic avenue. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will show the tenuous relationship the National Academy has had in exhibiting abstract art and accepting abstract artists as members. Critical movements are included such as Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Op Art, and represented not only by such canonical figures as Robert Motherwell, Jasper Johns, and Helen Frankenthaler, but also many others who played a vital role in the development of abstraction. While not a revisionist history of abstract art, the exhibition instead seeks to unveil some of the pluralistic ways in which abstraction developed after 1950 by examining works in the Academy collection. While this is a limited selection it is still revealing.Organized into three basic groupings, the first section of the exhibition will focus on gestural abstraction. Gesture is the hallmark of Abstract Expressionism and signified a groundbreaking development in abstract art. Artists have continued to utilize it from the surrealist-inspired biomorphic curves of Bernard Brussel-Smith's Cain and Abel (c. 1957) to Emily Mason's chromatic lyricism in For A Moment (1994) and even to the three dimensional Offset (2002) by Richard Hunt.The second group of works will focus on how geometric abstraction has persisted since its emergence, in various forms, as an alternative to gestural work in the 1960s. Dorothea Rockburne's Locus Series (1972) combines Conceptualism with an interest in mathematics to create a series of prints of great complexity and reductive beauty, while Robert Mangold and Tony Rosenthal have for years explored the Minimalist vocabulary of primary forms.The third section of the exhibition includes a selection of works that transcend stylistic boundaries and conveys a potent element of psychological introspection or metaphysical presence, Richard Anuszkiewicz's Temple of Deep Crimson (1985) is a meditative study of optical reverberation while Philip Pavia's Freefall (1994) elicits both the exhilaration and anxiety of plummeting into an abyss.The three designations of gesture, geometry, and introspection are not intended as hard and fast designations and there are many works in the exhibition that fit into two or three of these categories. As opposed to establishing rigorous and constricting epithets, they are presented here merely as a guide to help negotiate the innumerable ways in which artists have continued to create abstract art over the last fifty years. They should help to illuminate the pluralism that has been, and continues to be, the abstract impulse.The Abstract Impulse will be accompanied by a full color catalogue containing a forward by artist Jules Olitski, N.A. (1922-2007), an introduction by the Academy's Director, Annette Blaugrund, Ph.D., and an essay by Marshall Price, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, detailing the history of abstraction at the National Academy. Additional contributions by Cindy Medley Buckner and Monica Steinberg.