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Last Chance

Today is your last chance to see our traveling exhibition Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio.

More than sixty artworks depict life in the United States since the 1920s. Artists such as Ralston Crawford were inspired by themes of work and industry.

Buffalo Grain Elevators reveals the mythic beauty and formal purity of the American industrial landscape. Crisply modern in its linear style, taut angles, and vernacular American subject matter, the work celebrates heavy industry and the country's vast shipping networks. Painted in 1937 during the Great Depression, if offers the city's majestic silos as symbols of agricultural plenty in time of want.

After today, Scenes of American Life packs up and heads to the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, where it opens on April 26, 2002.

Source: Elizabeth Prelinger. Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2001).

Pictured: Ralston Crawford, 1906 Canada–1978 USA, Buffalo Grain Elevators, 1937, oil, 40 1/4 x 50 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.