What the Smithsonian Won't Say About Grandma Moses

"While the curatorial team can't be faulted for this, it remained fresh on my mind as I considered the powers we are beholden to in the United States. The exhibition begins unexpectedly with a small selection of landscapes on fire or caught in an impending storm - moments of chaos not typically associated with the famed centenarian artist whose work harkened back to rural, idyllic depictions of the US during an era of rapid modernization."

"The excitement these flames stirred in me was quickly extinguished by the exhibition's safe presentation of Grandma Moses's work. Its main accomplishment is its scale, which allows visitors to enjoy an astounding quantity of this seminal artist's oeuvre. But rather than presenting any novel or nuanced readings of the artist, or even justifying the exhibition's evocative title, it lays out a thorough biography of the artist that is didactic as opposed to substantial."

"This lack of discursive rigor is disappointing, given that the exhibition catalog brims with wonderfully researched essays that complicate the scholarship on Moses. While it's easy - and true - to point to Trump's executive order " Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History " as the reason for this risk-averse approach, the discrepancy reveals a deeper issue: the costs of preserving the myths that embody US exceptionalism."

A 2025 government shutdown delayed the exhibition's opening by about a month, connecting institutional timing to broader political powers. The show begins with landscapes on fire or caught in impending storms, presenting chaos uncharacteristic of the centenarian artist famed for rural, idyllic depictions. That tension is undercut by a safe, didactic presentation that prioritizes a thorough biography over novel aesthetic readings, even though scale offers an astounding quantity of works. Well-researched catalog essays complicate scholarship, yet risk-averse curatorial choices—attributed in part to political pressure and Trump's executive order—reveal costs of preserving myths of American exceptionalism and demand more rigorous critique of Moses's complex oeuvre.

Read at Hyperallergic