April 19–July 9, 2016
Reception: Tuesday, April 19, 6–8pm
Grey Art Gallery, NYU
100 Washington Square East
New York
Hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 11am–6pm,
Wednesday 11am–8pm, Saturday 11am–5pm
T 212 998 6780
F 212 995 4024
[email protected]
Grey Art Gallery presents the first comprehensive survey of Associated American Artists (AAA), the highly influential company that brought art collecting to the middle- and upper-middle classes in America. Titled Art for Every Home: Associated American Artists, 1934–2000, the exhibition tells the story of how this business, best-known for publishing prints by Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood, successfully cultivated American collectors over some seven decades, first by popularizing artists’ prints in the 1930s—in the midst of the Great Depression—and then, through innovative marketing, continuing to promote American art in a variety of mediums and genresover the following six decades.
Best known in its early years for publishing prints by Benton, Curry, and Wood, AAA—under Lewenthal’s directorship—developed strategies to stimulate interest in owning art: producing mail-order catalogues; contracting with department stores to sell artworks; and advertising AAA’s offerings in newspapers and magazines, and on the radio. In the late 1950s, Lewenthal’s successor, Sylvan Cole Jr., began producing museum-quality exhibitions and catalogues for the company’s New York gallery, which originally opened on Madison Avenue in 1936 and then relocated to Fifth Avenue in 1956. Art for Every Home traces AAA’s trajectory from its beginnings as a renowned American print publisher to its commissions of artworks for high-profile American corporations to its demise in 2000.
The exhibition includes some 150 prints, paintings, ceramics, textiles, and ephemera. Together, these create a portrait of AAA and its hybrid educational/commercial vision, offering insights into its role in expanding the market for art in the United States. Organized by Elizabeth G. Seaton and Jane Myers for the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Art for Every Home is accompanied by a 288-page catalogue and an extensive roster of public programs.
