Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, in 1889. Though his father, a congressman, expected him to enter politics, his mother supported his dreams of becoming an artist. She helped him financially as he pursued an education first at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then at the Académie Julian, in Paris. During W.W. I, Benton served in the U.S. Navy designing camouflage schemes for battleships. After the war, out of sync with modernism, he turned toward American Regionalism and its romantic depictions of the American heartland. Benton is best known for his murals documenting life in the Midwest. This exhibition, however, features 48 works inspired by his travels across the American West, which Benton saw as a place where “there are no limits … the world goes on indefinitely.” —Paulina Prosnitz