Permanent Collections — American Modernism

Includes works acquired with the support of the William J. & Suzanne V. von Liebig Endowment

The museum's collection of American Modernism includes some 270 paintings, constructions and works on paper.  Each installation includes a sampling of the 79 artists in the collection as well as more extensive groupings of artists represented in some depth, such as Morgan Russell, Oscar Bluemner, Hugh Breckenridge, Ilya Bolotowsky, A. E. Gallatin, George L. K. Morris, Guy Pène du Bois and John Ferren.

Other artists included are Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, Helen Torr, Gertrude Greene, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock and Alexander Calder.

Important groups of works by the so-called Park Avenue Cubists and the founding members of the American Abstract Artists are also represented.

The collection is rich in works that demonstrate the transition during the early years of the 20th century from images based on observable nature to increasingly abstract and independent works of art.  The efforts of these artists gradually shifted the center of advanced art at mid-century from Europe to the United States.

Morgan Russell, Synchromy, (c. 1914-1915), oil on cardboard