Westmoreland Museum of American Art exhibition tells American stories from the Great Depression to World War II

Opening this Thursday, “The Great Search: Art in a Time of Change, 1928-1945” is a new exhibition at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art that tells diverse stories from a difficult time in American history.

Jeremiah William McCarthy, the museum’s chief curator, discussed the inspiration for the collection of works.

“It actually started with a picture in the Westmoreland’s collection, which you might even know,” he said. “It’s called ‘Night Shift — Aliquippa’ by Ernest Fiene, and it shows a group of men on their way into the J&L Works to do the night shift.”

It’s one of the most popular paintings in the museum’s collection, and when McCarthy started digging into the work’s history, he discovered it has an illustrious past.

“I found that it was included in the 1939 World’s Fair, which was held in Queens,” he said. “This was an enormously important World’s Fair, primarily because it had an exhibition of American art.”

That showcase was called “American Art Today.”

“It was supposed to be this ‘state of the art’ in terms of where we are as a country, and that picture was in it,” McCarthy added. This made him consider the wide range of artists, styles and themes that defined modern American art in the period around the World’s Fair, starting in 1928, before the Great Depression, and ending in 1945 at the close of World War II.

The exhibition is in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art through the Art Bridges program. Nine works on loan from the Philadelphia Museum are included, as well as a handful of works from other sources, though it draws primarily from the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s collection.

“It’s showing our collection as something that should be regarded nationally, something that can tell these rich stories,” McCarthy said.

Several big name artists are shown in “The Great Search,” including Grant Wood, Andrew Wyeth and Arthur Dove. But this exhibition is about looking at the range of forms and stories in American art during this time period, and that requires the inclusion of some lesser-known artists.

“I also think that with the show, it was important to me to tell the story of a lot of women artists at the time,” McCarthy said. This includes a suite of work by Isabel Bishop, a painter who was celebrated in her heyday but doesn’t carry as much cultural weight now. A large portion of Bishop’s work depicts young women in the workforce, a reality of the wartime period that often is overlooked.

McCarthy also wanted to highlight the diverse international voices in art at the time.

“You have artists like Alexander Kostellow, who was working at Carnegie Tech. He’s from Iran, and he created the first industrial design program in the country at Carnegie Tech. He’s the founder of modern design pedagogy,” McCarthy said.

Then there’s Yasuo Kuniyoshi, who immigrated to the United States from Japan at age 17.

“In his life, he sits on all the best juries. He’s in all the best shows, but his entire career is plagued by these issues of nativist racism where he ultimately, throughout his whole life, he never was even allowed to become a citizen (of the United States),” McCarthy said.

He added that Kuniyoshi found a way to thrive artistically despite the hardships.

“I hope that once people come in for the big names, they learn these other stories that we’re talking about, people like Yasuo Kuniyoshi, people like Isabel Bishop,” McCarthy said.

He also discussed the fact that art was a much more present factor in the average person’s life.

“During the grips of what, if you look back at it retrospectively, is some of the most difficult years of American history for everyday people, it was also a time when you had the arts absolutely flourishing because they were federally and state funded,” he said.

Works of art were commonly circulated and displayed on a level that is no longer common, in places like universities, post offices and courthouses.

“You had people being engaged in the arts, thinking through the arts, in this very difficult time, and I find that kind of juxtaposition very interesting for a time like now, when I wonder why the same thing isn’t happening. And it’s because a lot of the same support systems aren’t in place,” McCarthy said.

The exhibition will be displayed at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art through Dec. 8 . To learn more about “The Great Search: Art in a Time of Change, 1928-1945,” visit thewestmoreland.org.