A jump on the millennium - exhibition of American art and culture from 1900-2000 at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Magazine Antiques, May, 1999 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City has recently opened the first installment of a two-part exhibition that surveys American art and culture from 1900 to 2000. This ambitious undertaking is on display throughout the museum. Together the two parts comprise more than twelve hundred works encompassing paintings, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, architecture, design, music, dance, literature, and film. The show is entitled The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900-2000. The first part (on view until August 22) is devoted to the years between 1900 and 1950 and the second (on view from September 26 to mid-February 2000) to those between 1950 and 2000. Both parts are sponsored by Intel Corporation.

The exhibition currently on view is installed chronologically, and each of its four sections develops a particular theme. The first section, entitled "America in the Age of Confidence, 1900-1919," chronicles the rise of the American city as the economy shifted from a rural to an industrial one. Some groups of painters, such as the members of the Ashcan school, found everyday activities their most compelling subjects; others, such as Cecilia Beaux and Frank W. Benson, explored quieter, more domestic settings; and still others, like Arthur Dove and Joseph Stella, experimented with abstraction and ushered in the modern movement. Architects and craftsmen working in emerging modern styles are represented in the show by Charles Follen McKim, Frank Lloyd Wright, Greene and Greene, Gustav Stickley, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and others.

The second section, "Jazz Age America, 1920-1929," treats the post-World War I era of prosperity and social freedom. The emergence of popular culture influenced the fine arts, and artists often incorporated graphic advertising imagery into their work. Explored in this section are movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, the writers of the "lost generation," the art deco buildings and interiors that were erected in the major cities of the United States, and the rerum to nature and the human form in reaction to the hard-edged approach of the Machine Age.

In the third section, "America in Crisis, 1930-1939," the effects of the Great Depression are considered through the work of regional American painters like Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton; the artists who found financial support through the government-sponsored work programs; and the growth of the film industry, which provided escape from the harsh realities of the economy and greatly influenced artists and writers of the period. By the end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s, a new generation of artists such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock were experimenting with expressionism. The decorative arts are represented by the industrial products designed by Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, and others.

The final section, "America in the 1940s," examines artists who became involved in the war effort, designing posters and other propaganda material. The vast numbers of immigrants who came to the United States to escape persecution in Europe included artists, musicians, dancers, and writers. Expatriate Americans returned to New York City bringing a new infusion of artistic talent, which established New York as the capital of the art world and the center of the abstract expressionist movement. Following the war, an unprecedented period of prosperity engendered the invention of new materials that designers and architects enthusiastically integrated into their designs. Here the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius is accompanied by furniture designed by Eliel Saarinen and Charles Eames.

The exhibition is accompanied by a two-volume catalogue, the first volume of which is available from the Whitney Museum bookstore by telephoning 212-570-3614. The second will appear in the fall of this year.