Thomas Hart Benton's "The Wreck of the Ole 97" (1943). Credit: Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tenn. Gift of the Benwood Foundation.
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A major exhibition on the American painter Thomas Hart Benton is in the pipeline at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...“Benton, Hollywood and History,” co-organized by LACMA and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., will feature about 100 works, including 75 paintings and murals and 25 preparatory studies and drawings, plus a selection of Benton’s historical prints, illustrated books and never-exhibited ephemera and photographs.
A written description LACMA released after The Times inquired about the grant says the show “will be the first exhibition to examine the visual strategies that Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) pursued to become the preeminent history painter of 20th century America, and the ways those strategies intersected… with the strategies of Hollywood, America’s paramount myth-making machine.”
The Nelson-Atkins Museum boats hundreds of works by Benton, who was born in rural Missouri and died in Kansas City, including 10 of the 14 mural panels the artist completed for “American Historical Epic,” which he conceived as a much larger series but had to set aside.
LACMA, which owns eight works by Benton, said the show is planned to open at the Nelson-Atkins early in 2015, then come to L.A. in the fall...
