Event
American Art: 1945 – 2000 LectureWith William Perthes
Thursday, April 11, 2024
6pm–7.30pm
The “American Century” RevisitedAmerican Art: 1945 – 2000
A Lecture with William M. Perthes
Bernard C Watson Director of Adult Education at the Barnes Foundation
April 11
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Members $15.00
Non-Members $25.00
The “American Century” Revisited
Harold Evans called the 20th century “The American Century” and following his lead in 1999 the Whitney Museum of American Art staged a massive two-part exhibition triumphantly called “The American Century.” These lectures will look closely at American painting of the 20th century, a period that saw New York supplant Paris as the center of the global art market. Together we will explore paintings by artists from the Ashcan School to Abstract Expressionism and Andy Warhol to Kehinde Wiley.
American Art: 1945 – 2000
After WW II New York exploded onto the world stage as the new center of modern art with Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning leading the charge. However, surging in their wake were new generations of painters eager to push the limits of American art. From Joan Mitchell and Alice Neel to Horace Pippin and Romare Bearden, from Andy Warhol and Keith Haring to Barkley L. Hendricks and Jean-Michel Basquiat, American art of the second half of the 20th century was diverse and challenging. Rediscover and discover anew the painting of this dynamic period of American art.
William M. Perthes is the Bernard C. Watson Director of Adult Education at the Barnes Foundation. William is an art historian whose scholarship focuses on Modernism, particularly in the United States, with a special concentration on the Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell. William has a background in philosophy, specifically John Dewey and American pragmatism. His recent work has focused on how experiences with works of art, both short and long term, can impact and inform fields as varied as business, medicine, and criminal justice.