Thomas Hart Benton

The art of Thomas Hart Benton has been regarded over the years as pure Americana, lovable but simple-minded illustration, or kitsch, and the artist himself has been considered an unsophisticated, down-to-earth midwesterner. Henry Adams, Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, has contributed a great deal to change these images. Adams's fine biography of Benton makes use of many previously unpublished sources to shed new light on this fascinating artist. He has also brought us two separate New York exhibitions—one of easel paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art's main branch, and the other of mural cycles and studies for them, at the Whitney Museum at Equitable Center—which have provided us a new opportunity to reappraise Benton's painting.