America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s

What is American art? That is a question the country’s artists asked and answered in myriad ways during the decade spanning the economic crash of 1929 through America’s entry into World War II. With economic downturn at home and the rising threat of fascism abroad, artists of the time applied their individualized visions of the nation to rethinking modernism. This exhibition brings together 50 works by some of the foremost artists of the era – including Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Grant Wood – to examine the landscape of the United States during the Great Depression and the many avenues artists explored as they sought to forge a new national art and identity. Read more.

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Wrigley’s (1937), Charles Green Shaw. Restricted gift of the Alsdorf Foundation

Mt. Katahdin (Maine), Autumn #2 (1939-40), Marsden Hartley. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cradling Wheat (1938), Thomas Hart Benton. Courtesy of Saint Louis Art Museum

New York Movie (1939), Edward Hopper. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

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