In 1990 archaeologist Charles K. Williams II began seriously to acquire paintings, sculptures, watercolors, and drawings by modern American artists, after about ten years of collecting 19th- and 20th-century American and European prints. Williams amassed an important collection that includes examples by most of the major American artists and movements of the early 20th century.
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This fully illustrated catalogue features entries on more than one hundred significant works by artists including Stieglitz Circle painters Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, and Arthur Dove; Precisionists Charles Demuth, Ralston Crawford, George Ault, and Charles Sheeler; and Philadelphia modernists Arthur B. Carles, Hugh Henry Breckenridge, and Earl Horter. Sculptures by Elie Nadelman, John Storrs, Alberto Giacometti, and Louise Nevelson are included. Of special note is Thomas Hart Benton’s painting The Apple of Discord and a rare landscape drawing by American Regionalist Grant Wood.