Swope Art Museum Permanent Collection Part 1
Having visited the Swope Art Museum several times before, I knew that it had a remarkable Permanent Collection. We traveled there earlier this month for the opening reception for their current exhibition of my own paintings. Naturally we wanted to see the work in their Collection as well. Above is my wife Alice standing next to Swope's Thomas Hart Benton painting Threshing Wheat from 1938-39. The tractor's smoke and the clouds in the painting seem to move of course, but in Benton's lively imagination his piles of wheat and the distant hills pulsate as well. Art can transport us to a different place or into a different mood. A real gem in Swope's Collection is Grant Wood's Spring in Town , oil, 1941. While painted in the threatening early years of WWII, it exudes a quiet optimism as we watch the figure preparing the ground for planting. The garden's freshly turned earth is magically dark and fertile looking. I want to take my shoes off and