America. Between Dreams and Realities

Featuring about 100 paintings, photographs, sculptures, and video works by more than 80 artists drawn from the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum--the Smithsonian Institution’s national museum of modern art--this exceptional survey offers a broad overview of modern and contemporary American art. Moving from the early twentieth-century through to the present day, it charts the evolving significance of social and political contexts to the making of art in America.  

Artworks by luminaries as varied as Louise Bourgeois, Edward Hopper, Arthur Jafa, The Guerilla Girls, Willem de Kooning, Ana Mendieta, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Jackson Pollock, Lorna Simpson, and Andy Warhol register the impact of major cultural and historical happenings, ranging from the Great Depression to the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s to our contemporary moment.

 Organized thematically, the exhibition looks carefully and critically at the notion of the American dream and uncovers how artists have variously grappled with questions of identity and the challenges of globalization, the realities of everyday life in America and the complexities of its landscapes, technological revolutions as well as political ones.