Art of the United States: 1945–1969

The Blanton’s holdings are particularly strong in postwar art from the United States, thanks to the gift of the collection of novelist James A. Michener and his wife Mari Sabusawa Michener. Michener wrote that, as a writer and collector, he “felt that he [Michener] ought to know what artists living in America during his lifetime were doing. Specifically, he wanted to see how they handled the kinds of artistic problems he faced.” Michener collected with the intention to donate to a teaching museum and thus cast a wide net and sought new talent. The resulting collection is notable for its strength in abstract painting, including gestural works by Helen Frankenthaler, Philip Guston, Adolph Gottlieb, and Joan Mitchell, as well as hard-edge abstraction by Ellsworth Kelly and Al Held, and Minimalist and proto-Pop paintings by Jo Baer, Lee Lozano, Mary Corse, Robert Indiana, and Yayoi Kusama.

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