America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s

June 5 - September 18, 2016 - This exhibition brings together 50 works by some of the foremost artists of the era, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Grant Wood, to examine the landscape of the United States during the Great Depression and the many avenues artists explored as they sought to forge a new national art and identity.

Bringing these diverse works of art together, America after the Fall tells the story of a nation’s fall from grace and irrevocable changes to the American dream. Following its installation at the Art Institute, the exhibition travels to the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and London’s Royal Academy, marking the first time many of these iconic American works—including Grant Wood’s American Gothic,have journeyed beyond North America. For French and British audiences, this traveling exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to experience these masterpieces firsthand. For all the show’s visitors, the presentation affords a trailblazing look at the turbulent economic, political, and aesthetic world of the 1930s and the critical and dynamic process of rethinking modernism that it fostered.