Picturing America II
(October 14 - November 14, 2009)

The new exhibit at the Museum, entitled “Picturing America”, was organized and awarded through the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is the newest project for the program - WE THE PEOPLE- which was begun in 2002 as a way to teach, study and understand America’s history and ideals.

“Picturing America” involves 40 printed masterpieces of American art – paintings, architecture, sculptures, photography, quilts, pottery and the decorative arts. 20 of the artworks were displayed in August; now the second group of 20 will be shown from October 14 through November 14, 2009 in the Dacotah Gallery.        

Each work of art is dated, contains a short explanation and is produced in stunning color. Each work is arranged to illustrate America’s revolutionary spirit, the American value of national pride, struggles with the environment, connecting with the Native culture and immigrant roots, and enthusiasm for new challenges.

One of the featured pieces in this second showing was “Autumn Landscape” a stained glass creation by Louis Comfort Tiffany.  He created this piece in 1923-1924 using nearly every technique in his stained glass repertoire: mottled glass for the dusky sky; confetti glass for the shifting colors of the autumn foliage; marbleized glass for the boulders; rippled glass for the foreground pool.  To deepen the color and enhance the depth of the distant mountains, Tiffany applied layers of glass to the back of the window, a technique called “plating.”  Tiffany was successful in his mission of introducing art into everyday life; he found many ways to give his art a practical purpose by designing everything from books to furniture.

Everyone is invited to be part of American history with some of the greatest masterpieces ever created in the United States by visiting “Picturing America.”

For information on past exhibits in the Dacotah Gallery, please click here.