American Stories 1765-1915

American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915 is the title of an exhibit on display now through January 24, 2010 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Our library has the exhibition catalog. This exhibit assembles more than 100 masterpieces of American painting from more than 45 museums across the country. It includes works by John Singleton Copley, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt and George Bellows. The exhibition is organized into four chronological sections which can also be viewed online: Inventing American Stories 1765-1830,
Stories for the Public 1830-1860, Stories of War and Reconcilation, 1860-1877, Cosmopolitan and Candid Stories, 1877-1915. The website for this exhibition is a treat in itself, well presented and surprisingly detailed. See the review article by
Roberta Smith in the New York Times. There is also a link to a slide show with some selected paintings.
Another interesting book in our collection on a smiliar topic is Daily Life in Art by Béatrice Fontanel.