Art & Democracy

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In the fall of 2026, Reynolda House will mark the occasion of the nation’s semiquincentennial (America250) with two exhibitions exploring pivotal movements in American art and history. Opening Sept. 17, 2026 in the historic house, Art & Democracy will assemble the museum’s collection as a visual chronicle of the nation since its founding and will remain on view for a year.

In the Babcock Wing, Flash Point: The Civil Rights Photography of Danny Lyon will be on view from September 17, 2026 to January 3, 2027.

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The works in Reynolda’s art collection were assembled for artistic merit, yet they address many common themes in American society and culture. Most artists share the concerns of their eras and reflect them, consciously or unconsciously, in their creations. To commemorate the 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, the 1917 bungalow will reopen as an immersive gallery of national development through an experience only art can afford: suggestive, emotional, unconventional, and inconclusive.

Temporary galleries will be dedicated to various themes. “A Nation on Paper” will reaffirm the radical principle that power should be held not by theocrats, autocrats, or hereditary monarchs but rather by elected representatives elected to uphold laws and rules of governance. The works in these galleries will explore the declarations that were inscribed, treaties that were honored or broken, and Constitutional provisions that were observed or amended. They also demonstrate how artists have cherished the First Amendment’s provision that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” In another gallery titled “Landscape as National Anthem,” paintings and prints from the nineteenth century will embody artistic reverence for the natural environment. In that era, landscape painting also aspired to a unifying, democratic sentiment, a patriotic ideal available to all citizens in a wilderness already vulnerable to the encroachment of the railroad and the plow. Lastly, “Parade of All Stripes” will explore twentieth century developments in abstract art. Though closely connected to modern trends in Europe and elsewhere, abstract painting became associated in the popular imagination with the post-war triumph of the American model of individual expressive liberty, though the reality often lagged far behind the propaganda. 

Art & Democracy will offer a pilgrimage to the past, within the convenience and comfort of a single museum visit. The collection will be supplemented by loans from Old Salem Museums and Gardens and Wake Forest University.

Art & Democracy is curated by Phil Archer, Betsy Main Babcock Deputy Director for Reynolda House Museum of American Art.