Beach Museum of Art hosts 'Art for Every Home' opening reception Sept. 17 and scholarly speaker series this fall
Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015
"The Sowers" by Thomas Hart Benton is from the series "The Year of Peril." Benton began the series immediately after the December 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, compelled to express on canvas this heightened threat to American democracy. The painting is in the collection of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia Research Center and Gallery. | Download the following photo.
MANHATTAN — The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University will celebrate the opening of "Art for Every Home: Associated American Artists" with a reception at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, at the museum.
Attendees will be able to view the exhibition and meet Elizabeth Seaton, exhibition co-curator and Beach Museum of Art curator. Hors d'oeurves and refreshments will be served.
"Art for Every Home: Associated American Artists," a new exhibition organized by the Beach Museum of Art, provides the first comprehensive overview of the commercial gallery best known as the publisher of prints by regionalist artists Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood that were sold via mail-order catalog. More than 136 works in the exhibition provide an account of Associated American Artists' storied involvement in the sale of American prints and its lesser-known promotion of paintings, ceramics and textiles for more than six decades. Through aggressive marketing, Associated American Artists sought to bring original American art over the threshold of every American home.
A speaker series related to the exhibition will take place throughout the fall at the museum and includes the following presentations, all at 5:30 p.m.:
• Seaton will present "Art by Mail: Associated American Artists" on Thursday, Oct. 1.
• Joan Stack, State Historical Society of Missouri curator, will present "Thomas Hart Benton: The Perils of War" on Thursday, Oct. 29.
• Kristina Wilson, Clark University professor of art history, will present "The American Home of the 1950s" on Thursday, Nov. 5.
• Erika Doss, Notre Dame University professor of American studies, will present "Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood" on Thursday, Nov. 19.
The reception and speaker series are free and the public is welcome.
Due to the set-up involved with this exhibition, the museum is delaying the opening of "Art for Every Home" until Sept. 16.
"Art for Every Home: Associated American Artists" will be on view at the Beach Museum of Art through Jan. 31, 2016. It will then travel to three additional institutions: Grey Art Gallery at New York University in New York City, April 19 to July 9, 2016; American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, Sept. 16, 2016, to Jan. 2, 2017; and Syracuse University Art Galleries, New York, Jan. 26 to March 26, 2017.
The Beach Museum of Art is on the southeast corner of the Kansas State University campus at the corner of Anderson Avenue and 14th Street. Admission is free. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Free parking is available adjacent to the building. For more information, call 785-532-7718 or visit http://beach.k-state.edu.
