Celebrating The Eight: American Modernism from the Potamkin Collection

March 23–July 2, 2000

In February 1908, a group of artists—including William Glackens, George Luks, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, Robert Henri, Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson and Arthur B. Davies—banded together to present a groundbreaking show in New York City that protested the restrictive exhibition policies of National Academy of Design. Dubbed “The Eight” (and later given the “Ashcan School” moniker in 1934), these rebellious painters introduced a healthy and entirely modern vitality into American art through their uncompromising commitment to unvarnished realism and artistic independence. Celebrating the Eight: American Modernism from the Potamkin Collection focuses on a selection of spectacular paintings by The Eight given to the museum as gifts from the noted collectors, Dr. and Mrs. Meyer P. Potamkin.