Art, American style

With the traveling exhibit "Masterpieces of American Art, 1770–1920: From the Detroit Institute of Arts," Americans can take in their own artistic heritage | Gene Edward Veith

American art before the 20th century has received little respect, even in its own country. Many art history books just skim over or skip completely the art from the earlier days of the Republic, focusing instead on what the Europeans were doing.

But early American painters, self-consciously trying to create new styles for the new nation, had a greatness all their own. While the Europeans were painting Romanticized nature scenes, the Americans were painting landscapes that grew out of Jonathan Edwards's insight that nature is the art of God. And what the American luminists—such as Martin Johnson Heade and George Inness—were doing in exploring light anticipated the much more famous French Impressionists.

With the traveling exhibit "Masterpieces of American Art, 1770–1920: From the Detroit Institute of Arts," Americans can take in their own artistic heritage. The show debuted at the National Gallery of Ireland and is on a circuit to the Phoenix Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh, and then back to Detroit, from whose extensive collection of American art this exhibition was drawn.