Rethinking American Art

“For all those who want to understand American art and the art world, written by the best person to tell the story.”—Dr. Kathleen Foster, Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art A sweeping history of changing critical standards and values in American art across 200 years. Art lovers, perplexed why their favorite artists are no longer on the walls of their local museums, will understand why change is constant. All art lovers will find a cautionary lesson about the unpredictable future. Each generation of experts believes its own taste is the last word. As the author writes, “People are inclined to view past changes in taste as unique misjudgments that will not happen again…. How unthinking, how stupid, they think, not realizing that the pattern has been repeated again and again in the past and will be in the future. We now recognize that the process is a continual one. Each past canon was established for good reason; there are no mistakes, there is only history. Many of the favored artists of any period including our own will drop from favor, something that art dealers never tell their clients, or museum curators their boards.” Stebbins describes the taste and outlook of each generation through his extensive research on the critics, museum activities, and the art market of each era. An entire section of the book is devoted to some of the most important collectors of the 20th century. Rejecting the typical curator’s role as a flatterer of collectors, Stebbins examines these collectors in depth for the first time, outlining their successes and failures and their quirky personalities. He takes a hard look at the warring brothers, Sterling and Steven C. Clark; the inhibited Grenville Winthrop who left over 4,000 works to Harvard; Maxim Karolik, the gifted Ukrainian Jew who miraculously created a new canon during the Second World War; and, more recently, the enormously wealthy Alice Walton who built a new, ambitious museum of American Art in Arkansas.