Grandma Moses

A major reexamination of the life, art, and legacy of a self-taught American masterGrandma Moses: A Good Day's Work repositions Anna Mary Robertson ';Grandma' Moses (18601961) as a multidimensional force in American art, whose beloved recollections of rural life earned her a distinctive place in the cultural imagination of the postwar era. Moses was eighty years old when Otto Kallir, a New York art dealer and recent emigre from Nazi-held Austria, introduced her to the world. ';Grandma Moses,' as the press dubbed her, quickly became a polarizing figure, beloved by the public yet dismissed by the art world for her story-time scenes and lack of formal training.Drawing on Moses's reflection on her own life as ';a good day's work,' the book charts Moses's creative development from her earliest artistic efforts to the emergence of her signature style, revealing a multidimensional artist who fused direct observation of nature, labor, and personal memories to tell idiosyncratic yet compelling stories. It positions Moses as a central figure in the history of twentieth-century American art, a painter whose life and work bore witness to the Civil War, two world wars, and the civil rights era.Beautifully illustrated, Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work captures the indomitable spirit Moses brought to her artmaking, conveying a candor and authority that still resonate today with the quest for a homespun American visual tradition.Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DCExhibition ScheduleSmithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DCNovember 25, 2025July 12, 2026