Reflections: Works by Modern Masters from the Collection

As war disrupted Europe’s economy and art market—twice in the first half of the 20th century—the United States provided refuge to both European and American artists whose work was revolutionary. After a parade of stylistic “isms” such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism, American artists embraced abstraction as the formal strategy that best suited their artistic purpose and made New York City the international capital of the art world. Reflections: Works by Modern Masters from the Collection features art from the 1910s to the 1970s, from the Armory Show of 1913 to the Pop artists of the “psychedelic” decade. Conceived as a complement to the concurrent exhibition, When Modern was Contemporary: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger Collection, this exhibition features works by many of the same American artists but in this case drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection and from that of Paul and Celia Mabry (Oxford). Moreover it includes remarkable examples by contemporaneous artists not represented in the Neuberger Collection—like Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol—as well as works by Mississippi modernist painters such as Dusti Bongé, Andrew Bucci, and George Wardlaw.