America in the Making

Art serves as a vital mirror of society—a visual record of the historical, political, and social transformations that shape a culture’s values, struggles, and identity. From the colonial period to the present, American art has registered these shifts, revealing how artists respond to and reinterpret the conditions of their time. From early portraits that record new social hierarchies and a fledgling national identity, to 19th-century landscape paintings that celebrate the sublimity of nature while advancing the doctrines of Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism, the art of the United States has long expressed the ambition —and contradictions—of a nation in formation. As the nation modernized, artists took on the complexities of 20th-century life, turning away from the visible world by mid-century, and embracing abstraction, the subconscious, and a restless new spirit of individualism and dissent. Today, reflecting an increasingly multicultural society, art continues to respond dynamically in real time to a rapidly changing world and to grapple with the urgent concerns of our present moment.

With this exhibition, the Addison marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We have taken this opportunity to do something unusual for this museum, devoting the entire building to a chronological installation of works from our permanent collection. The story of American art told through our collection is neither comprehensive nor objective. Like the artworks it contains, the Addison’s collection can also be read as a window into the conditions, values, and assumptions under which it has been assembled and continues to grow. Its strengths and omissions reflect the circumstances of its formation, including individual taste, institutional priorities, and broader social and cultural forces. In this sense, the exhibition also offers a portrait of a collection in formation, one that, like America itself, remains continually “in the making.”