Modernisms

Modernisms, a fifth-floor presentation of works from the collection, looks mainly at artists working in the first half of the 20th century—George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Paul Cadmus, Alexander Calder, Ralston Crawford, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and John Sloan, among others—artists whose works, both figurative and abstract, pushed the margins of American art outward. This presentation reflects the multiple strands of modernism that characterize twentieth-century American art. Organized in a loose chronology and in broad historical categories, it recognizes that various “modernisms” overlap, crossover, and intermingle in subject matter, process, thought, and material.