So then, what could possibly bind together a picture of Abraham Lincoln and his family, the photograph \u201cLa Conquistadora (Our Lady of Peace) at the Trinity Nuclear Test Site Near Socorro, New Mexico,\u201d and a portrait of Marilyn Monroe?<\/p>\n
Simple, Douberley says: \u201cThe America 250 celebration seemed like a perfect opportunity for the Benton to show off our collection of American art, which is one of the strengths of the collection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chock-a-block with photographs, paintings, sculpture, and other media, \u201cEncounters with the Collection: Exploring America at 250\u201d<\/a> ponders such quintessential themes of the American dream, East meets West, civil rights, and urban renewal.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went through lots of ways to organize the exhibition and realized we needed different points of access for people, so we went broad and decided to think about what the word \u2018America\u2019 can mean,\u201d Douberley says. \u201cAmerica is a place, an identity, and an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Douberley has put on display such iconic locations as Yosemite National Park in an Ansel Adams photograph and the Blue Ridge Mountains in a William Louis Sonntag painting, alongside Martin Johnson Heade\u2019s \u201cRye Beach, New Hampshire,\u201d painted just before the Civil War.<\/p>\n Many New England vacationers might recognize the horseshoe-shaped beach, but the sketch\u2019s focus is the burst of red sky off in the distance: \u201cWhat you think of this painting has a lot to do with what you think is going on in the sky. Is it a sunrise? Is it a sunset? Is there a fire? Any of those things could be true, and there\u2019s no indication in the title,\u201d Douberley says.<\/p>\n The neighboring piece, \u201cLouisiana,\u201d blends the themes of place and identity, as artist Sarah Sense quite literally weaves pictures of Sitting Bull, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Marilyn Monroe together into a paper tapestry.<\/p>\n Douberley says \u201cLouisiana,\u201d the newest addition to the Benton\u2019s collection, represents two sides of Sense\u2019s identity, the Native American Chitimacha and Choctaw side and the nonindigenous side. Kind of a \u201ccowboy and Indians\u201d mash up, the wall tag reads.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I\u2019ve talked to groups about this image, we talk about how weaving the images together actually makes it harder to see them, and it\u2019s harder to tell what\u2019s here. Maybe that says something to you about history, identity, and our place within this story \u2013 that it\u2019s complicated,\u201d Douberley says.<\/p>\n As visitors have come through the exhibition, which has been open since last summer and closes Aug. 2, she adds that she\u2019s seen people gravitate to the other side of the room toward Jack Levine\u2019s painting \u201cThe Political Arena.\u201d<\/p>\n The canvas depicts two men in a fight, presumably a boxing or wrestling match, with a throng of onlookers ringside. On the walls above their heads, signs read: \u201cKansas,\u201d \u201cNevada,\u201d and \u201cIdaho.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s meant to bring on lots of questions, Douberley says. What are the signs? Is this a sporting event? Could this be a political convention? There are no answers in the exhibition, although one might deduce their own if they know Levine\u2019s art is famous for his political and social commentaries.<\/p>\n A hand-colored lithograph of Pocahontas also has drawn attention, Douberley says, if only for the replica 1616 engraving that\u2019s printed on the wall label. It\u2019s the only surviving image of her, and the lithograph and engraving look nothing alike.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then there\u2019s \u2018Path of the Axe,\u2019\u201d Douberley says of the winter landscape from Albertus Eugene Jones that depicts a clearcut forest. \u201cI\u2019ve had really great conversations with students about this one. There was one student who told me they liked it because you don\u2019t see the axe, and how something not even in the painting could change the landscape and make such a big impact.\u201d<\/p>\n Douberley says she used as her inspiration for the exhibition a set of five prints from artist Indiana, who\u2019s best known for his pop art \u201cLove\u201d image with the famously slated O. The Benton owns \u201cDemuth American Dream No. 5\u201d but has never displayed together all five silkscreens.<\/p>\n In the lead up to the exhibition over the last few years, Douberley says she took notice of various news stories about the American dream, whether it still exists and whether it\u2019s achievable.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing on a university campus, centering this idea of the American dream made a lot of sense for the exhibition. The American dream, of course, has its own history and is something that gets reformulated and rethought by different generations,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Though this exhibition closes in about a month, the Benton will continue to mark the semiquincentennial in its next show, \u201cEncounters with the Collection: Reframing America at 250.\u201d<\/p>\n Its theme comes from a conversation Douberley says she had with a visitor to \u201cExploring America at 250\u201d who asked her about photographer Tseng Kwong Chi, with his \u201cNiagara Falls, NY\u201d on display, and what made him an American artist if he was born in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n Douberley says she couldn\u2019t answer whether he was a naturalized citizen or had a green card. Turns out, he was Canadian.<\/p>\n \u201cIt made me reflect on how American artists are claimed as much as they are born,\u201d she says. \u201cHe is characterized in our collection as \u2018American\u2019 and some of that has to do with the fact he\u2019s best known for taking America as his subject \u2013 and that characterization is common in the art world. But it made me think about other instances, other stories in our collection that might question and expand what we consider American art.\u201d<\/p>\n She says a person\u2019s nationality is a basic way that museums categorize artists. When someone is added to a database, their nationality automatically gets added. But for many artists, especially contemporary ones, a single \u2013 or even two \u2013 nationalities might not be fully descriptive.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the launch point for the next America 250 exhibition,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll include a painting from Benjamin West, an 18th century artist who spent most of his career in England painting for King George: \u201cHe\u2019s always considered an American artist, but you could just as easily say he\u2019s a British artist,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Work from Dutch American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning also will be on display, along with Native American artists such as Natalie Ball, whose work comes courtesy of the Art Bridges Foundation<\/a>, which through museum partnerships and other efforts seeks to put American art on display.<\/p>\n \u201cOur focus with these exhibitions has been on giving people opportunities to find their own way into American art and decide what celebrating the 250th means to them,\u201d Douberley says. \u201cThe heart of our democracy is asking questions and doing that relative to art is a way to celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cEncounters with the Collection: Exploring America at 250\u201d<\/a> will be on display at the William Benton Museum of Art until Aug. 2. \u201cEncounters with the Collection: Reframing America at 250\u201d will open Sept. 1 and run until Aug. 1, 2027. They are part of America 250 CT<\/a>, administered by CT Humanities<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The show prompts visitors to think about America as a place, an identity, and an idea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":247994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,1914,2461,2235,2198,2225,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-247982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-sfa","category-staff","category-today-homepage","category-tolland-county","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-15 13:57:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247982"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248204,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247982\/revisions\/248204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/247994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247982"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=247982"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=247982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-06-17_BentonAmerica250Collection-9-300x200.jpg\")
Places, People, and Dreams<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\""Rabbit](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-06-17_BentonAmerica250Collection-10-300x200.jpg\")
What\u2019s American?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-06-17_BentonAmerica250Collection-1-300x200.jpg\")