August 26, 2011 - March 24, 2012

American Artists in the 1920s and 1930s painted in a broad range of Realist, Impressionist and modern styles. Most of the paintings in this exhibition were purchased by Bartlett Arkell, the founder and first president of Beech-Nut Packing Company. Arkell began to collect paintings for the museum in the mid-1920s. This was a time when many American painters continued to work in styles influenced by the French Impressionists, while others were encouraged by Ashcan School artists to explore greater realism. During the 1930s, American artists became more interested in organic and geometric abstraction, but abstract art had a limited appeal with the public. Arkell favored Realist and Impressionist works that presented nostalgic views of America unchanged by industry - not avant-garde art. He acquired paintings by Impressionist and Ashcan School artists who had once shocked people with their controversial subject matter, but by the 1920s were hailed as America's greatest artists.