American Modernism: Painting and Photography
Public opening of exhibition
When: October 2, 2015
Where: Courtyard reception hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico with music in the Lobby. Exhibition in the Goodwin Gallery.
Time: 5 to 8 PM
Cost: FREE
The Alpha Cats put a modernist spin on this opening with their popular Swing Jazz. Dress as a Modernist with best costume winning a prize. Refreshments served.
An American Modernism is a selection of more than fifty works from the museum’s collection exploring how Modernists in the United States struggled to define modern art in terms of the American experience. Concentrating on the 1920s and 1930s, the selection of paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs illustrate the complexities of establishing a recognizable American style in the early years of the twentieth century. While some believed it should be defined by the precision and dynamism of the machine age, others rejected industrialization and commercialism for the perceived authenticity of nature and rural life. The tensions between these motives and the struggle to find a distinctively American visual vocabulary is demonstrated in works by Andrew Dasburg, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Cady Wells, Edward Weston, and many other modern masters.
