December 3, 2014 – May 3, 2015
This season two art exhibitions at Bone Creek Museum are dedicated to Regionalism, a Realist movement of the 1930’s and 40’s which countered the Modernist avant-garde styles from Europe and New York. Regionalists depicted their home places and iconic American experiences.
Dale Nichols (1904-1995) is the cornerstone artist of the Bone Creek Museum collection. He was also the fourth most famous Regionalist painter after the Big Three: Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. In 1940, an Illinois newspaper actually called the group the Big Four, with Nichols listed among the other well-known names.
Bone Creek Museum’s mission is connecting people to the land through art. Regionalism is an influential art movement at the heart of the larger theme of agrarianism. These exhibitions present works of art that convey nostalgia for farming methods of the past and the way many still make their living cultivating the land.