Softcover
1997 · Wichita, KS
by Ross, Novelene
Wichita, KS: Wichita Art Museum, 1997. Softcover. VG-; interior lovely but with bump to tail of spine and lower outer corner.. Color-illus. wraps with French flaps. 272 pp. Numerous color and bw plates. Progressive American artists and cultural critics in the first half of this century sought to identify an American tradition in art, one uniquely rooted in national values and experience and independent of European taste and models. During the same period, a small number of pioneering American institutions were established to collect exclusively art produced by the country's own artists. One of the earliest and most important of these is the Wichita Art Museum, which came into being through a trust left to the city of Wichita by Louise Caldwell Murdock in 1915. Mrs. Murdock's visionary gift was a fund to purchase American art: in return, the city was to build a museum to house the collection. Over the next decades, a daringly avant-garde collection was assembled by Elizabeth S. Navas, the first trustee of the Murdock Collection. Guided by, among others, Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery and Lloyd Goodrich, then director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Navas purchased a wide cross section of American art, including important works by George Bellows, Charles Burchfield, Stuart Davis, Thomas Eakins, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Charles Sheeler, John Steuart Curry, and Mark Tobey. Toward an American Identity marks the first time that major works from the collection--one of the finest groups of American painting in the United States--will be shared with audiences outside of Wichita. This is the catalogue from this traveling exhibition.
(Inventory #: 16215)