The Exhibition Experience
Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses, “A Fire in the Woods” (1947), oil on board (photo courtesy the Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Step inside the exhibition, and a dark wall draws your eye straight ahead to a portrait of the artist, brush in hand, at work on a painting. Nearby, bright orange flames are painted into some of her early works, offering an unexpected first glimpse of the artist beyond the familiar scenes of rural life.
As you wander through the galleries, expect more than paintings. An antique seed catalog and other objects demonstrate life during Moses’s time. Portions of the gallery speak to her life in Virginia. Look to the map on the wall–can you locate the towns where she resided? Notice how her paintings remind you of those places.
Grandma Moses, We Are Resting, 1951, oil on high-density fiberboard, overall: 24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Kallir Family, in Memory of Hildegard Bachert, 2019.55, © Grandma Moses Properties Co., NY
As you turn the corner, peek into the cases on your left for a few things from Grandma Moses’s life. Can you spot the jar of glitter she used in her paintings? How about the Skippy peanut butter jar lid she used to mix paint? Then, look above the cases to see another side of her creativity: Moses created embroidery before arthritis made needlework too difficult, and she turned to painting.
The final gallery is full of things to explore, from Grandma Moses’s familiar holiday greeting cards to the story of how she became famous. In 1938, a collector spotted her paintings in a pharmacy window and bought them. Two years later, art dealer Otto Kallir gave Moses her first solo exhibition, What a Farmwife Painted. She was 80 years old.
Before you leave, look for Norman Rockwell’s Christmas Homecoming. He tucked his friend Grandma Moses into the upper left corner of the family scene. Can your family spot her? Then settle into the reading nook for a story and write a postcard to relatives of your own in the interactive corner.
Connecting the Past to Bentonville’s Present
Grandma Moses found ideas in the world around her. Early on, she painted from newspaper illustrations. Later, she gathered details from magazines and made them her own. The similar creative spark is alive in Bentonville’s artistry today.
Chloe Barber, the quilter behind Petunia and Patch, lives near Olivia Trimble’s Bentonville Quilt mural. Chloe admired its colors and geometric patterns for years, but when she first started quilting, she wasn’t ready to turn it into a quilt of her own. “Three years later, I finally did,” she says.
One artist painted a quilt on a wall. Another saw it and made a quilt from fabric. As your family leaves the exhibition, what colors, shapes, or stories will stay with you?
