Twentieth-Century Art
Artists in the twentieth century chose two distinct ways to depict modernism and the excitement of progress—realism and abstraction. Both are well represented in the collection. The museum has the largest collection of New Deal art and murals in the country. Images of jazz and street life, farms and factories, workers and families captured a changing America, from Thomas Hart Benton's Midwest to Jacob Lawrence's Harlem. In Cape Cod Morning (shown right) Edward Hopper captures the post-war mood of anxiety in this stark, ambiguous painting. John Sloan and Andrew Wyeth are among other realist painters in the collection.
Some American modernists found new ways of depicting the spirit of their age. The dynamic rhythms of modern life energized artists like Georgia O'Keeffe and Joseph Stella, while artists such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline reveled in the freedoms and frustrations of abstraction, and in turn inspired the next generation of painters such as Richard Diebenkorn and Kenneth Noland. Important twentieth-century artists such as Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, Wayne Thiebaud, Alfred Jensen, and Philip Guston explored questions about subject, composition, color, and technique.
In recent years the museum has strengthened its commitment to contemporary artists through important acquisitions, including works by Jennifer Bartlett, Deborah Butterfield, Eric Fischl, David Hockney, Nam June Paik, Renée Stout, and Mark Tansey.
Pictured top: Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning, 1950, oil, 34 1/8 x 40 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation
Pictured middle: Georgia O'Keeffe, Manhattan, 1932, oil, 84 3/8 x 48 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation
Pictured bottom: Jennifer Bartlett, Air: 24 Hours, Eleven A. M., about 1991–1992, oil, 84 x 84 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth
