America Today was Benton's first major mural commission and the most ambitious he ever executed in New York City. The exhibition will demonstrate how the work not only marked a turning point in Benton's career as a painter Jo — elevating his stature among his peers and critics — but in hindsight stands out even more as a singular achievement of American art of the period, one that, among other effects, served to legitimize modern mural painting as part of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Arts Project in the 1930s.
Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975) Deep South from America Today, 1930–31 Mural cycle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of AXA Equitable, 2012
Stylistically bold, America Today stands midway between the artist's early experiments in abstraction, signs of which are still evident in the mural, and the expressive figurative style for which he is best known today. Thematically, the mural evokes the ebullient belief in American progress that was characteristic of the 1920s, even as it acknowledges the onset of economic distress that would characterize life in the following decade. The commissioning of America Today also marked an important episode in international modernism; the great Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco was commissioned to paint a mural in New York City's New School at the same time, and the two artists worked on their projects concurrently.
Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975); Midwest from America Today, 1930–31. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The exhibition is organized into three sections: the first features a large selection of Benton's studies for the mural; the second presents the mural installed in a facsimile of its original space at the New School; and the third features related works by other artists, all from the Museum's collection.
The keystone of the exhibition — the mural — is installed in a reconstruction of the 30-by-22-foot boardroom as it existed at the New School in 1931, allowing viewers to experience the mural cycle as Benton conceived it. A highlight of this extraordinary opportunity to view the reconstructed mural in its nearly original setting is the incorporation of elements that were part of the architect Joseph Urban's modernist aesthetic for the New School building, such as the black and red color scheme he used for the room. Among the mural's most distinctive features are the aluminum-leaf wooden moldings, which not only frame the mural but also create inventive spatial breaks within each large panel. When the mural was installed at the New School, these moldings echoed the Art Deco details of Urban's building design.
The 10 panels — most of which loom to a height of seven-and-a-half feet — depict a panoramic sweep of rural and urban life on the eve of the Great Depression. They capture the tension of early modern America, with allusions to race relations and social values, while simultaneously celebrating the themes of industry, progress, and urban life. An array of pre-Depression types — flappers, farmers, steel workers, stock market tycoons, and others representing a cross section of American life surrounds visitors in the mural space and can be further explored in the adjacent galleries, which will present many of the studies Benton made during his travels around the United States in the 1920s and to which he referred for the mural project.
The second section of the exhibition, featuring Benton's studies for America Today, illuminates the deliberative nature of his working process. Besides the impressions Benton captured during his travels around the US in the 1920s, the studies on view include character studies in pencil for figures that appear in the mural, as well as painted compositional studies for individual mural panels.
The final section of the exhibition includes works that relate to Benton's America Today drawn from the Met's Departments of Modern and Contemporary Art, Photographs, and European Paintings. Highlights of this section are other works by Benton; renowned photographs by Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and Lewis Hine; and, of particular interest, Jackson Pollock's Pasiphaë (1943). During the time Benton was painting America Today, Pollock was his student and served as a model for his teacher's mural. The inclusion of Pollock's abstract painting in the exhibition provides opportunities to consider the complex personal and artistic relationship between the two artists.
After more than 50 years in the boardroom of the New School, a space that was subsequently used as a classroom, America Today proved difficult for the school to maintain in perpetuity. In 1982, the school announced the sale of the mural cycle to the Manhattan art dealer Maurice Segoura, with the condition that it would not be re-sold outside the United States or as individual panels. But the work was a great challenge to sell as a whole, increasing the likelihood that the panels would be dispersed.
America Today was acquired by AXA (then Equitable Life) in 1984, in support of efforts on the part of then-Mayor Edward I. Koch and others to keep it intact and in New York City. Two years later, after extensive cleaning and restoration, America Today was unveiled to critical acclaim in AXA’s new headquarters at 787 Seventh Avenue. When the company moved its corporate headquarters again in 1996, to 1290 Avenue of the Americas, America Today was put on display in the lobby. There it remained until January 2012, when the company was asked to remove it to make way for a renovation. The removal triggered AXA's decision to place the historic work in a museum collection, and in December 2012, AXA donated the mural to the Metropolitan Museum.
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