Taking Shape: Building The Benton's Permanent Collection

Taking Shape: Building the Benton’s Permanent Collection offers a behind-the-scenes look at various stages in the development of the museum’s institutional holdings.  Artists featured in the exhibition include American Impressionists Childe Hassam and William Irvine, whose works were among the first to grace the Benton’s walls.  Works from well-known artists of the Abstract Expressionist era, such as Helen Frakenthaler and Robert Motherwell, that became part of the collection in the 1970s, are also among those on display.  Additionally, thematic areas within the Benton collections are highlighted through examples of portraiture, ephemera, and genre scenes of urban America.