24 September 2003 – 23 June 2004
At the beginning of the 20th Century America was well on the way to becoming the wealthiest state in the world but it was still perceived by outsiders to be a country without any real culture. With very few exceptions, American artists and designers of the 19th century had been measured against their European contemporaries and found wanting. By the 1950s all of this had changed and America was at the cutting edge of the arts; a great dynamo which seemed capable of endless invention. No other country had the social and ethnic mix of the States.