Grandma Moses Exhibition at Smithsonian American Art Museum Examines Her Idyllic Rural Vision

The exhibition 'Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work' is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through July 12, 2026. It features works by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961), who began painting in her late seventies and became the first American celebrity artist, appearing on the covers of Life and Time. Her paintings, such as 'Grandma Moses Goes to the Big City' (1946), 'Early Springtime on the Farm' (1945), and 'A Country Wedding' (1951), depict rural American life—apple picking, maple sugaring, barn dances, and holidays—without showing poverty or political conflict. President Harry Truman received her at the White House and preferred her figurative work to Jackson Pollock's abstractions. The exhibition's catalogue includes a comparative page of paintings by William H. Johnson, which present a poorer rural world from a Black perspective. The author, David Carrier, reflects on Moses's work in relation to L.S. Lowry, a British painter championed by figures like John Berger and Harold Wilson, and notes that Moses's art, though sometimes labeled 'primitive,' is ambitious and versatile, with her farmed landscapes dominating human figures. Key works in the show are gifts from the Kallir family or museum purchases, including pieces like 'Bringing in the Maple Syrup' (1940 or earlier) and 'Halloween' (1955).