“I was after a picture of America in its entirety...I ranged north and south and from New York to Hollywood and back and forth in legend and history.”
— Thomas Hart Benton
Schoelkopf Gallery is pleased to announce a retrospective exhibition of the work of Thomas Hart Benton, spanning five decades of the artist’s storied career. The exhibition opens in September 2026 as part of the gallery’s 25th anniversary program and coincides with the United States Semiquincentennial.
This is the first major solo exhibition of Benton’s work in New York in over a decade, following the unveiling of the installation of his iconic mural America Today (1930–31) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.
Thomas Hart Benton emerged in the 1930s as the leading figure in the telling of American stories. In this sweeping tribute to one of the most quintessential visual narrators of the American experience, A Picture of America in its Entirety speaks to Benton’s role as a principal storyteller of 20th century American history and as one of the nation’s greatest artists.
Benton’s work was distinctly American in its colorful and dynamic representations of people’s everyday lives and labor. Inspired by his wide-ranging and frequent travel across the country, Benton sought to convey what he described as “a picture of America in its entirety.”
