Co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art, Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation introduced a generation of Chinese museum-goers to a landmark selection of 130 works of art representing the full range of American art. The artworks gathered in the exhibition created a composite picture of the American experience—its myths, dreams, ordeals, and vulnerabilities. +
Art in America explored periods of colonization and expansion, articulating national and regional identities and identifying moments of rupture and cohesion. Colonial portraiture and New World landscapes explored early forms of national expression, and whimsical genre paintings and grand history paintings dialogued about class, identity, and mythology. Gilded Age visions of wealth and success hung alongside the social realism of the Great Depression, while the visual cacophony of Pop Art and the austerity of Minimalism conveyed the expanded vision of post-World War II American art. An exhibition spanning three centuries, with media as varied as painting, sculpture, installation, and video, Art in America presented the vibrant multiplicity and innovation of the American democratic experiment.
The success of Art in America sparked the interest of other venues, and the show was reconfigured for exhibition in Russia at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow before traveling to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain.
Dates & Venues
February 10–April 5, 2007
National Museum of China, Beijing, China
May 1–June 30, 2007
Shanghai Museum/Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China
July 24–September 9, 2007
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia
October 10, 2007–April 27, 2008
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
Works of Art from the Terra Foundation Collection
- Milton Avery, Adolescence, 1947
- Thomas Hart Benton, The Spinners, 1925-56
- John George Brown, The Cider Mill, 1880
- Mary Cassatt, Jenny and Her Sleepy Child, 1891–92
- Frederic Edwin Church, Our Banner in the Sky, 1861
- John Singleton Copley, Portrait of a Lady in a Blue Dress, 1763
- Thomas Cole, Landscape with Figures: A Scene from “The Last of the Mohicans”, 1826
- Eanger Irving Couse, Making Pottery, 1912
- Charles Demuth, Welcome to our City, 1921
- Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Portrait of a Lady Holding a Rose, 1912
- Marsden Hartley, Painting No. 50, 1914–15
- William Stanley Haseltine, Rocks at Nahant, 1864
- Childe Hassam, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, c. 1892
- Martin Johnson Heade, Newburyport Marshes: Approaching Storm, c. 1871
- Edward Hicks, A Peaceable Kingdom with Quakers Bearing Banners, 1829 or 1830
- Edward Hopper, Dawn in Pennsylvania, 1942
- William S. Jewett, The Promised Land – The Grayson Family, 1850
- Walt Kuhn, Clown with Drum, 1942
- Ernest Lawson, Brooklyn Bridge, 1917–20
- George Luks, Knitting for the Soldiers: High Bridge Park, c. 1918
- Reginald Marsh, Pip and Flip, 1932
- Richard Emil (or Edward) Miller, The White Shawl, after 1910
- Ammi Phillips, Girl in a Red Dress, c. 1835
- William Matthew Prior, Young Boy Holding a Bow and Arrow with a Drum on the Floor, by 1856
- John Singer Sargent, A Parisian Beggar Girl, c. 1880
- John H. Twatchman, Winter Landscape, 1890–1900
- Pieter Vanderlyn, Portrait of Mrs. Myndert Myndertse (Jannetje-Persen) and her Daughter, Sara, c. 1741
- Thomas Waterman Wood, The Yankee Pedlar, 1872
Publications
Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation [Chinese and English edition]. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007.
Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation [abbreviated Russian edition]. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007.
Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in the USA: 300 años de innovación [Spanish edition]. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007.
