American Art

Long before New York became known as the international center of the art world in the wake of WWII, there was a rich history of art in the United States, from significant 18th- and 19th-century portraiture and history painting to the Hudson River School, the Ashcan School, American Realism, and Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession. The series of post-war American movements, however, such as Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, have situated the country as a nexus of modern and contemporary art history. Since the 1980s, while the art world has come to be seen as much more globalized, New York and, recently, Los Angeles remain world centers of art production, consumption, and critical discourse.