This installation showcases a selection of American and European paintings with decorative arts from around the world to illustrate the century’s expanding reach and interests.

They include Native American pottery, Malagan masks, Japanese metalwork and lacquer, carved Chinese jade, and fine European jewelry. This unusual pairing of American and European art with artifacts and non-western art dissolves notions of a “monolithic” culture along established parameters.

Instead, it proposes that the failure of European-centered “high-art” to acknowledge the multitude of international cultures and internal sub-cultures necessitated the radical change brought about by the advent of modernity.