Dear America: Artists Explore the American Experience

What does it mean to be American? How have artists examined this question?

More than 100 works on paper show how artists have explored the American experience over the last 250 years through depictions of the country’s landscape, people, and concepts of freedom. Wide-ranging works include photographs by Carleton Watkins, Dorothea Lange, and Carrie Mae Weems; prints by Thomas Hart Benton, Roy Lichtenstein, and Rupert García; and drawings by Thomas Moran, John Wilson, and Tonita Peña.

Image credit: Clare Romano, Grand Canyon, 1977, color collagraph on wove paper, National Gallery of Art, Gift of Bob Stana and Tom Judy, 2016.148.44