But it is also a reminder that, though it is rarely the first of
its facets to be celebrated, America has long produced great
artists and glorious art. True, these titans of the canvas are
often lost behind a crowd scene of other US legends – gleam-toothed
actors; hoop-holing sportsmen and podium-posing politicians. But
they are there all the same: Georgia O'Keeffe with her floral
close-ups, Big Apple vistas and New Mexico landscapes; Jackson
Pollock with his intense swirls; Andy Warhol and his
celebrity-inflected pop art.
And with them comes a whispered secret:should you choose, you
can indulge a passion for painting and sculpture – for the
staunchly traditional or the belligerently modern; for home-spun
works or international masterpieces – in just about every city in
the country.
You can do this in the cultural temples of Washington DC, New
York and Chicago – or in less-known galleries from Seattle to
Birmingham via Boise and Wichita. You will find high concepts and
bluntly provocative daubings, sharp slices of insight and bleak,
impenetrable nightmares. But if visual culture is your thing,
America has much to offer. The only question, perhaps, is where to
start…
For more information, visit DiscoverAmerica.com
West coast wonders
As a city renowned for glitz and glamour, it should be no great
shock that Los Angeles embraces art with relish. The J Paul Getty
Museum (001 310 440 7300; getty.edu/museum; free) proffers two sites, one
in Malibu, one in Brentwood – with the latter, the Getty Center,
splitting its attention between European stalwarts (Turner, Manet,
Renoir, Titian) and a outdoor sculpture area that features Henry
Moore's 1985 human study Bronze Form.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, meanwhile, serves up three
cutting-edge LA locations (001 213 626 6222; moca.org; Grand Avenue and Geffen Contemporary
$12/£7.50; Design Center free). At the main Grand Center location,
a feast of post-war creativity is on display includes Roy
Lichtenstein's Navajo, Seated (1957).
The age-old competition between California's two largest cities
ensures fertile art turf in San Francisco.
The de Young Museum (001 415 750 3600; deyoung.famsf.org; $11/£7) delivers a glut of
American art from the 17th century onwards, with spotlights
directed at Bay Area artists.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (001 415 581 3500; asianart.org; $12/ £7.50) was formerly part of
the de Young Museum. But it has proved so successful that it now
operates from its own premises. Across some 17,000 exhibits, the
museum takes in inspired and inspiration pieces from Iran, Korea,
China and Japan.
A defiantly creative city, Seattle is also a west coast art
hotspot. The Seattle Art Museum (001 206 654 3100; seattleartmuseum.org; $17/£11) covers many
bases, its main building playing host to early American
watercolours, while the attached Olympic Sculpture Park is home to
giant al fresco works, including Alexander Calder's metal Eagle
(1971).
Hidden gems
The idea of America as a country infused with art is brought
home by the numerous kernels of culture located in cities that do
not sit immediately in the holidaymaker's path.
Providence, for example, has the Museum of Art at the Rhode
Island School of Design (001 401 454 6500; risdmuseum.org; $12/£7.50, concs available).
Here the latest exhibition, America in View: Landscape Photography
1865 to Now (until 13 Jan) throws out myriad raw vistas and
tree-swathed snapshots.
A few states south along the East Coast, the Delaware Art Museum
in Wilmington (001 302 571 9590; delart.org; $12/£7.50) pins itself to another
fine cache of American art, including Edward Hopper's soft
Summertime (1943).
Hopper is present in darker form – via his 1921 etching Night
Shadows – at the excellent Des Moines Art Center in Iowa (001 515
277 4405; desmoinesartcenter.org; free), as is Georgia
O'Keeffe, whose superb From The Lake No 1 (1924) has waves rising
in layers of paint.
The Boise Art Museum (001 208 345 8330; boiseartmuseum.org; $5/£3), in Idaho's capital,
gazes out at the American north-west that surrounds it. Next up is
Left Unsaid (24 Nov-3 Mar), examining stark creations by local
artist Troy Passey.
And America's geographical heartland has its artistic
exclamation marks. The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha (001 402 342
3300; joslyn.org; $8/£5) surveys the fields of
Nebraska from a pristine 1931 Art Deco structure, combining Renoir
and Monet with Native American painting and sculpture.
Elsewhere, the Wichita Art Museum (001 316 268 4921; wichitaartmuseum.org; $7/£4), the largest
gallery in Kansas, has 7,000 works, including pieces by "cowboy
artist" Charles Russell – all dusty plains and open horizons.
Special subjects
If you want to look at the artist as much as the art, you can
also find institutions that are dedicated solely to the name above
the door. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (001 505 946 1000; okeeffemuseum.org; $12/£12.50) eulogises this
female art pioneer in Santa Fe – the dry contours of New Mexico
having hugely informed her work. And the blondest art star of the
1960s is remembered at the Andy Warhol Museum (above, 001 412 237
8300; warhol.org; $20/£12.50) in his native Pittsburgh
– a treasure trove of photos, film, paintings and sculptures
including Self Portrait In Drag (1981).
Tucked away in Nyack, New York State, the Edward Hopper House
Art Center (001 845 358 0774; edwardhopperhouse.org; $5/£3) treads a rather
more traditional line, showing examples of Hopper's oeuvre in his
childhood home.
Jackson Pollock is similarly recalled at the Pollock-Krasner
House (001 631 324 4929; sb.cc.stonybrook.edu/pkhouse; $5-$10/£3-£6), the
property in East Hampton on Long Island, east of New York City,
that he shared with his artist wife Lee Krasner.
Southern sophistication
The sheer size of Houston demands an art institution of suitable
stature. So it proves with the Museum of Fine Arts (above 001 713
639 7300; mfah.org; $9-$10/ £5-£6), which tempers the
urban sprawl of the Texas metropolis with 63,000 exhibits. A wealth
of Impressionism includes one of Monet's timeless 1907 Water
Lilies.
Smaller of scale, but no less intriguing, the Birmingham Museum
of Art (001 205 254 2565; artsbma.org; free) fits in with the jazz and
civil rights history of this burgeoning Alabama city. Current
exhibition Norman Rockwell's America (to 6 Jan, $15/£9.50) holds a
mirror to the New York illustrator whose populist portrayals
captured the US of the 20th century.
To see one of Rockwell's classics, the wartime heroine Rosie the
Riveter (1943), head to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
in Bentonville, Arkansas (001 479 418 5700; crystalbridges.org; free). Here, the story of
the USA is also told via pieces like Charles Willson Peale's 1780
portrait of George Washington.
Further glimpses of the American soul are available at West
Virginia's Huntington Museum of Art (001 304 529 2701; hmoa.org; $5/£3, Tue free), which includes John
Singer Sargent's Near June Street, Worcester, Massachusetts
(1890).
The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia (001 757 664 6200; chrysler.org; free), sees Rubens and Cézanne rub
shoulders with Hopper's New York Pavements (1924).
Grand eastern establishments
America's north-east is home to a cluster of what might be
deemed some of the planet's finest galleries. New York alone is an
art aficionado's dream. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (001 212 535
7710; metmuseum.org; $25/£15) ranks as the largest art
museum in the country, home to two million works. It runs the gamut
of European masters, but also has space for American moments such
as Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950).
Similarly revered, the Museum of Modern Art (001 212 708 9400; moma.org; $25/£15) does outbursts of dashing and
daring, covering architecture, design and film as well as art.
Warhol's seismic Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) – the canvas
equivalent of an arched eyebrow – is one of the venue's main
attractions.
You'll find further dabs of the modern and outré at the
Guggenheim Museum (001 212 423 3500; guggenheim.org; $22/£14), which parades the best
of the 20th century – including Picasso's Landscape At Céret (1911)
– in a cylindrical Frank Lloyd Wright building that's an artwork in
itself.
Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (001 617 267 9300; mfa.org; $25/£15) has a strong domestic
emphasis. Its Art of the Americas Wing focuses on North, South and
Central America, which takes in everything from Mayan ceramics to
striking works of Native American genius.
A weighty rival to the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago (001
312 443 3600; artic.edu; $18/£11) is the second-largest art
museum in the USA. Particularly good on Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism, offerings include Van Gogh's melancholy Self
Portrait (1887).
Washington DC also has its say. Part of the Smithsonian
Institution, the American Art Museum (001 202 633 7970; americanart.si.edu; free) and National Portrait
Gallery (001 202 633 8300; npg.si.edu; free) co-exist as two
galleries in one building. The former dispenses US brushstrokes
such as O'Keeffe's Manhattan (1932) – while the latter is noted for
presidential portraits. The National Gallery of Art (001 202 737
4215; nga.gov; free) reverts to Europe via Rembrandt,
Da Vinci and Matisse.
At the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven (001 203 432
0600; artgallery.yale.edu; free), the Société Anonyme
exhibition opens on 12 Dec to celebrate early 20th-century European
and American art.
