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American Art

 “Our most enthusiastic purpose will be to reveal the richness of the art created in our United States, to stimulate our native artists and afford them inspiration.”

Duncan Phillips, 1921
Visitors look at a painting
image for 2018-05-03-curators-perspective-klee

Made in the USA

In 2014, the Phillips presented the exhibition Made in the USA: American Masters from The Phillips Collection, 1850-1970, the most comprehensive on-site installation of the museum’s American collection ever undertaken.

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Phillips always wanted the museum to be a place where artists went to look at great art from the past as well as the art of their contemporaries. Artist Kenneth Noland said “going to the Phillips was like going to church” and admired not only the Klee Room, but Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Moonlit Cove, and the work of Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe. Richard Diebenkorn acknowledged that Henri Matisse’s Studio, Quai St. Michel had been “coming out in his work for decades” after having studied while stationed at Quantico during WWII and spoke reverently about his regular visits nearly every weekend to the Phillips which he stated was “a refuge, a sanctuary for me to absorb everything on those walls,” and Sam Gilliam, who was impressed by Augustus Vincent Tack’s Aspiration in the stairwell and also by Arthur Dove’s Flour Mill II.  

James McLaughlin Staff Show

In the spirit of of Duncan Phillips’s desire to support our own artists, the Phillips presents exhibitions featuring artwork by our talented staff.