On View
The First Disruptors: Portraits from the Gilded Age
Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, Vanderbilt
November 1, 2025 – March 31, 2027
Curated by Prof. Dr. Hildegard Weißenbach-Kronauer
Exhibition Text
“They called themselves disruptors too. The language was different — 'captain of industry', 'trust', 'combine' — but the underlying claim was the same: we are building something that has never existed before, and your regulations do not yet apply to it. The AKU's Gilded Age collection now numbers thirteen works. This exhibition hangs them across Gallery V in the order of their net worth at peak, adjusted for inflation.”
A survey of Gilded Age corporate portraiture drawn from the AKU permanent collection. The exhibition places nineteenth-century robber barons in direct dialogue with the technology founders of our own era — asking what, precisely, has changed between the trust and the platform, the railroad and the cloud, Standard Oil and the algorithm.
Works in the Exhibition(13)
Portrait of Andrew Carnegie, 1901
After John Singer Sargent (attributed), American, 1856–1925, 1901
Oil on canvas
AKU-2007-014
Standard Oil, Dissolved (Bust of John D. Rockefeller)
Unknown, American, after a model of c. 1911; cast 1989, 1911
Bronze on marble pedestal
AKU-2003-002
The Corner: J.P. Morgan at 23 Wall Street, October 1907
Everett Harrington Doane (attributed), American, 1871–1931, 1909
Oil on canvas
AKU-2011-007
The Commodore (Portrait Bust of Cornelius Vanderbilt)
After Chauncey Bradley Ives (attributed), American, 1810–1894, 1877
Marble
AKU-1999-008
Portrait of Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, 1921
Edmund Charles Tarbell (attributed), American, 1862–1938, 1921
Oil on canvas
AKU-2009-004
Black Friday, September 24, 1869 (Portrait of Jay Gould)
Unknown, American, c. 1872, 1872
Oil on canvas
AKU-1997-003
Portrait of John Jacob Astor (After the Fur Trade)
After Gilbert Stuart (attributed), American, 1755–1828, 1825
Oil on canvas
AKU-2001-006
The Wizard of Menlo Park (Allegorical Portrait of Thomas Edison)
Benton Wingate Spruance (attributed), American, 1904–1967, 1931
Oil on canvas, American Regionalist manner
AKU-2013-008
Portrait of William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon, c. 1930
Attributed to the Studio of Diego Rivera, Mexican-American, c. 1930, 1930
Oil on canvas
AKU-2006-011
Sam Walton, Bentonville, Arkansas, 1962
Portrait Collective Ozark, Fayetteville, 1998
Oil on canvas, American Hyperrealist manner
AKU-2018-005
The Studio, Burbank, February 1941
After the WPA Federal Art Project, American, 1941
Tempera and oil on canvas, after New Deal mural tradition
AKU-2012-009
Hughes H-1 Racer (Portrait of Howard Hughes, 1938)
Peter Edward Blume (attributed), American, 1906–1992, 1942
Oil on canvas, American Precisionist manner
AKU-2004-013
Portrait Bust of Andrew W. Mellon and Andrew Carnegie (Double Study)
Walker Hancock, American, 1901–1998, 1955
Bronze, cast 1955
AKU-2016-002
