After Many Springs: Regionalism, Modernism & the Midwest

January 30 – May 17, 2009
Anna K. Meredith Gallery

After Many Springs: Regionalism, Modernism & the Midwest is the first exhibition to address the artistic battles that were waged simultaneously in New York and the Midwest during the 1930s and the early 1940s. In the midst of the Great Depression, one of the most contentious and fractious artistic debates emerged, one that pitted progressive modernist figures such as Jackson Pollock, Charles Sheeler, and Philip Guston, against artists who sought a revival of tradition. Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood fought against abstraction, believing that American subjects should be conveyed only by straightforward, recognizable imagery. While Benton would become one of the most vocal spokespersons for the movement that became known as Regionalism, his painting, like that of Wood, actually had its origins in abstraction and the Modernist movement.

Drawing on the work of artists such as Benton, Curry, and Wood, as well as Margaret Bourke-White, Guston, Dorothea Lange, Pollock, Ben Shahn, Sheeler, and others, After Many Springs aims to rethink and probe such terms as Regionalism and Modernism. While these movements are usually seen as opposites, this exhibition aims to challenge that perception by highlighting the various formal and thematic correspondences that subtly weave them together.

Comprised of painting, photography, and documentary film, the works in this exhibition portray not only the Midwestern landscape, but convey complex issues prevalent in the Depression era, including poverty, racism, and ecological devastation.

After Many Springs was organized by curator Debra Bricker Balken and Art Center Director Jeff Fleming and is accompanied by a full-color catalogue.

After Many Springs: Regionalism, Modernism & the Midwest
Related Programs

CONVERSATIONS ON ART

Debra Bricker Balken, exhibition curator
Tuesday, January 27, 6:30 pm
Levitt Auditorium
Catalogue signing to follow
FREE admission; reservations required*

This lecture investigates the formal and thematic connections between Regionalism and Modernism, two seemingly opposed aesthetic movements. By comparing the work of artists such as Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock, Grant Wood and Philip Guston, John Steuart Curry and Margaret Bourke-White, certain unities emerge that suggest their art is not nearly as divergent as has been traditionally inscribed.

Debra Bricker Balken is the guest curator for After Many Springs. Balken’s scholarship focuses on American art of the early- through mid-20th century, and she has received a number of awards for her work which include a Senior Fellowship, Dedalus Foundation in New York (2002); a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Bellagio (2006); and a major grant from the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program (2008).

*Reservations for this FREE lecture are required and available exclusively through IowaTIX beginning Monday, January 12. Reserve your seats at www.iowatix.com or by phone at 515.277.3727 (9 am – 5 pm, Monday – Friday).

TANDEM GALLERY TALK + FILM

Director Jeff Fleming, with Visiting Assistant Professor Dr. Gregg Narber, Luther College
Sunday, February 8, 1 pm
FREE admission

Join Jeff Fleming and Dr. Gregg Narber for a candid conversation about After Many Springs. Fleming will discuss the exhibition’s theme and artwork, while Narber will provide historical context focusing on the New Deal and the government’s photography program during the Great Depression.

2 pm: Light refreshments

2:30 pm: Wild Boys of the Road, 1993

CELEBRATING AMERICAN GOTHIC

FILM
This American Gothic, 2008
Thursday, March 19, 7 pm
Levitt Auditorium, FREE admission
Sasha Waters Freyer, director
63 minutes, not rated (suitable for all ages)

This documentary film follows a group of local women as they work toward their dream of a Gothic House Visitor Center to attract tourists and save their struggling community.

LECTURE + RECEPTION

Sunday, March 22
FREE admission to the following events:

2 pm: Lecture at Hoyt Sherman Place Theater, 1501 Woodland Avenue, Des Moines

3:45 – 6:30 pm: Reception at the Des Moines Art Center, 4700 Grand Avenue, Des Moines

The Des Moines Public Library’s AViD Series (Authors Visiting in Des Moines) and the Iowa History Center at Simpson College present a program by author Steven Biel and filmmaker Sasha Waters Freyer. The program will be moderated by Des Moines Art Center Director Jeff Fleming. Biel is the author of American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting (2005) and Waters Freyer directed and produced the film This American Gothic (2008), “a quirky portrait of Eldon, Iowa, population 998, site of the house that inspired one of the most famous paintings in the world.” Following the program, Biel and Waters Freyer will sign copies of their respective works at Hoyt Sherman Place Theater until 4:30 pm. Lecture attendees and the public are then invited to a reception at the Des Moines Art Center, showcasing the exhibition After Many Springs: Regionalism, Modernism & the Midwest, in which American Gothic is prominently featured from January 29 – March 29. Books, DVDs, and autographs will continue to be available during the reception.

Support for these events is provided by Simpson College, the Des Moines Art Center, Humanities Iowa, Hoyt Sherman Place Theater, and the Des Moines Public Library Foundation.

CONVERSATIONS ON ART

Wanda Corn, Scholar
Thursday, March 26, 6:30 pm
“Grant Wood’s American Gothic: Regionalist, Modernist, Internationalist”
Levitt Auditorium
FREE admission; reservations required*

Wanda Corn, one of the most eminent scholars of late- 19th- and early- 20th-century American art, will deliver a talk about Grant Wood’s American Gothic and its odyssey from a Regionalist painting in the 1930s to a national and international icon in 2009. The lecture will explore how the painting of a Midwestern couple with a pitchfork in front of a tiny farmhouse earned celebrity status.

Corn is widely known in the field through her teaching, curating, and writing, and has received numerous fellowships and awards for the multiple facets of her career. Notable publications and essays include the monograph, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision (1983); “Coming of Age: Historical Scholarship in American Art” published in Art Bulletin (1988); and the book The Great American Thing: Art and National Identity, 1915–1935 (1999), which won the Smithsonian Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art in 2000. Corn is recently retired from teaching at Stanford University.

*Reservations for this FREE lecture are required and available exclusively through IowaTIX beginning Monday, March 9. Reserve your seats at www.iowatix.com or by phone at 515.277.3727 (9 am - 5 pm, Monday – Friday).

COMMUNITY DAY

Sunday, March 29 1 – 4 pm
FREE admission

Spend the afternoon at the Art Center with family and friends immersed in culture and surrounded by masterpieces!

Art and dance activities draw inspiration from the vivid landscapes and dramatic weather phenomena depicted in many of the artworks in After Many Springs. Learn about “weather grams” and create one for a friend using biodegradable materials. Interpret the artwork using your body and creative movement.

Hoot it up with barn dance music from the mighty Barn Owl Band! Its good old-fashioned, toe-tapping, foot-stomping entertainment brought up to date with fresh renditions of time-honored tunes and songs, as well as new compositions that add to the tradition.

Wear your ruby slippers and watch The Wizard of Oz, 1939.
View with your own eyes one of the world’s most famous paintings, American Gothic. This is the last day the painting is on view in the exhibition.
Embark on a treasure hunt through the galleries.
Enjoy FREE cookies and lemonade.

TALK + MUSIC

“Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee”: The Songs of the Great Depression
Michael Lasser, music historian and host of National Public Radio’s “Fascinatin’ Rhythm”
Thursday, April 2, 7 pm
Levitt Auditorium, FREE admission
Book signing to follow

Popular songs from the 1930s take on richer meanings in Michael Lasser’s lively music program which is tailored to complement After Many Springs.

Even though the American Regionalists are mainly rural in subject matter, popular songs from the Great Depression have a distinctively urban outlook. The songwriters of Tin Pan Alley were more likely to write not about the plight of farmers, but about an unemployed steelworker begging for a dime on a New York street corner. The songs of the 1930s took on a new darker strain. There were love songs that were also about unemployment, social unrest, the need for money, and coffee. Returned to its own time, even the melancholy “Over the Rainbow” (1939) is a quintessential Depression song.

FILM SERIES

All films will be shown in Levitt Auditorium and are FREE.
These five films offer a look at popular cinema from the 1930s to 1940s——the period of focus in After Many Springs.

Follow the link below for more information on the Film Series
More details...

This exhibition has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius. Additional support has been provided by Roberta and Howard Ahmanson; an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities; Hometown Perry, Iowa; Humanities Iowa; the Iowa Arts Council; the Robert Lehman Foundation; the Meredith Corporation Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Principal Financial Group Foundation, Inc. The views and opinions expressed by this exhibition and related programming do not necessarily reflect those of Humanities Iowa or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

GUIDED TOURS

We are pleased to offer guided tours of After Many Springs: Regionalism, Modernism & the Midwest and the permanent collections. We can accommodate groups from two to 100 people. It’s a perfect activity for a family, work team, or social group. Please schedule at least three weeks in advance. Contact Jennifer Cooley at jcooley@desmoinesartcenter.org or call 515.271.0328.

ADULT GROUP TOURS:
$2 per person / $20 minimum fee
STUDENT TOURS: FREE

WEEKEND DROP-IN TOURS FREE
Saturday, January 31 – Sunday, March 29
    Saturdays at 1 pm and 2 pm
    Sundays at 2 pm
Saturday, April 4 – Sunday, May 17
    Saturdays at 2 pm
    Sundays at 2 pm