On December 22, American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The exhibition features works by defining artists of the first half of the twentieth century including Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Arthur Dove (1880-1946), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) , Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), and Elie Nadelman (1880-1946).
Drawing from the Whitney’s impressive permanent collection, the yearlong show is organized into small-scale retrospectives for each artist and includes iconic and lesser-known works across a range of mediums. While, many of the works have not been on view in years, the show also includes some of the Whitney’s best-known holdings including Edward Hopper’s A Woman in the Sun (1961), Jacob Lawrence’s War Series 1946), and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Summer Days (1936).
Curated by Barbara Haskell, the exhibition will undergo a rotation in May 2013 so that other artists’ works can be installed. Including realist and modernist masterpieces, American Legends illustrates the dynamic and varied nature of American art during the early twentieth century.
