American Art Collaborative

At the height of the Great Depression, Thomas Hart Benton created a mural cycle for the library of the newly founded Whitney Museum of American Art. Entitled Arts of Life in America, it consisted of eight tempera panels depicting the arts of the South, the West (for which this painting served as a study), indigenous peoples, and the city. Always one to champion the democratic reach of the visual arts, here Benton celebrated the “arts” of card playing, dancing, and the rodeo, all quotidian activities that, he said, “have a sort of pulse, a go and come.”