Liz Glynn's 'American Progress' in Paula Cooper Gallery's Street Vitrine

Liz Glynn's sculpture 'American Progress (after John Gast)' (2017) is currently displayed in the street-level vitrine of Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. The work is part of Glynn's ongoing series 'The Shape of Progress,' which critically examines U.S. history and the myths of American identity. The sculpture uses thin copper sheeting to evoke the draped folds of the woman's dress in John Gast's 1872 painting 'American Progress,' an allegory of manifest destiny. In Gast's painting, a colossal female figure strides from an industrialized East toward an 'untamed' West, with bison and Indigenous people fleeing, while farmers, railroads, and telegraph wires follow, symbolizing 19th-century expansion. Glynn's reinterpretation critiques this narrative.