American Beauty

AMERICAN ART has a vast sweep that is hard to contain in a single exhibition, but “An American Place: Selections from the James and Barbara Palmer Collection,” on view from January 29–April 24 at the Palmer Museum of Art at The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa., paints a picture of American art from after the Civil War through the Civil Rights era. To celebrate the museum’s 50th anniversary, this show—named for Alfred Stieglitz’s seminal gallery “An American Place”—captures the dramatic changes the country experienced in that era, while highlighting artists from groups that were once marginalized.

In 2013, the Palmer Museum of Art published a includes thematic essays by notable scholars in the field of American art, including Lauren Lessing, Molly S. Hutton, Leo G. Mazow, Robert Cozzolino, Marshall N. Price, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, and Randall R. Griffey. The information presented here is indebted to their work.