The Agrarian Spirit in the Homestead Era exhibition catalogue is now available for sale. This full-color, 96-page first edition features essays by Dr. Reed Anderson, Dr. Brandon Ruud, and the collectors Mark and Carol Moseman.
The Moseman Collection of Agrarian Art includes paintings, prints, and sculptures from the 1850s to the present. The Albrecht-Kemper Museum is honored to exhibit selections from this collection that explore how American and French artists depicted the people, places, and daily activities of a time period that is so significant to the American story, the Homestead Era of the 1850s to the 1940s.
Agrarian Art expresses man’s relation to the land. Like Wildlife Art or Western Art, Agrarian Art includes multiple styles and periods of art seen through the lens of one theme or subject. I created this genre of art for artists, collectors, scholars, and the public to reflect on America’s important agrarian events, lands, and people…a large part of my motivation to build this collection is to see, preserve, and share a body of exceptional art that reflects on the agrarian experiences of my ancestors.
Mark Moseman, collector
Summer’s Harvest, c. 1930
Pastel painting
Walking into the home of an art collector can be a bit like walking into someone’s mind and imagination. The home of Mark and Carol Moseman is no different. They surround themselves with paintings, prints, and sculptures of rural life, hard-working farmers, and agrarian history. Their passionate interest in such a specific theme creates conversations among artworks that span wide gaps in time and space, but still speak to the recurring worries and joys of working the land.
Megan Benitz, Exhibition Manager
The exhibition will be on view at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art from April 17 to June 6, 2021, and at the Great Plains Art Museum from July 2 to October 23, 2021.
Table of Contents
Introduction and Acknowledgements, Megan Benitz
Preface, Mark L. Moseman
From the Collectors, Mark and Carol Moseman
Agrarian Spirit in the Homestead Era: The Moseman Collection of Agrarian Art, Mark L. Moseman
The Farmer Takes a Wife: The Division of Farm Labor in Agrarian Art, Reed Anderson, PhD
Working Hard/Hardly Working: Agrarian Art in the Nineteenth Century, Brandon Ruud
Agrarian Spirit in the Homestead Era: Artworks, Artist Bios, and Relevance of each Work, Mark L. Moseman
Checklist of the Exhibition, Compiled by Carol Moseman
96 pages, full color, soft cover
ISBN 978-0-9615372-9-6
Order online or by calling (816) 233-7003.
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Museum Store Price: $40
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