1905 Building

This exhibition was organized by the Brooklyn Museum in cooperation with the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York and the Albright-Knox, and featured 50 paintings that represented the eclecticism of American art before the First World War.

A Celebration of American Ideals included 50 paintings that reflect particular ideals or characteristics that relate specifically to American art. From the early 19th century to the present, scholars and critics have sought to define what it is that makes American art “typically” American. The Brooklyn Museum’s extensive and important collection of American painting provides rich and ample opportunity to help clarify this issue.

American painting has always been marked by an eclectic range of styles and subject matter. From the days of the first pilgrim to the verge of the 21st century, America has been a “melting pot” of peoples, encompassing within its borders various religions, cultures and lifestyles, as well as various means of cultural expression. It has often been noted that eclecticism is in itself a characteristic of American art, reflecting the freedom of expression and sense of personal independence inherent in a democratic heritage.

This exhibition celebrated the range and diversity of the foundations of the American artistic vision, and included works by artists such as John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase, who were trained in Europe; Thomas Chambers and James MacDougal Hart, who belonged to the Hudson River School of landscape painters; and Jerome Thompson and George Inness, painters of the American rural scene. The genre of domestic scenes is represented in a variety of different works, such as interiors by Frederick Spencer and Thomas Eakins and mother-and-child motifs by Mary Cassatt and George de Forest Brush.

This exhibition was organized by the Brooklyn Museum in cooperation with the Parrish Art Museum and the Albright-Knox.