Exhibition Reexamines Grandma Moses as a Singular and Complex Figure in American Art

“Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” repositions Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860–1961) as a multidimensional force in American art, whose beloved painted recollections of rural life earned her a distinctive place in the cultural imagination of the postwar era. Drawing its name from Moses’ reflection on her own life as a “good day’s work,” the exhibition reveals how Moses’ art fused creativity, labor and memories from a century-long life. 

“Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” is anchored by artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, including many of Moses’ most celebrated paintings. The 88 works in the exhibition are drawn from the museum’s holdings and loans from private collections and public museums and institutions. This selection of objects, primarily created between the late 1930s and the artist’s death in 1961, are woven into a narrative that explores lesser-known aspects of Moses’ life, including the years she spent living, working and raising her family in post-Reconstruction Virginia. Later sections of the exhibition probe Moses’ artistic evolution as the labor of artmaking displaced the hours once dedicated to family and farming, and her personal transformation from farmwife to famous artist in Cold War America. Photographs, ephemeral objects and Moses’ own words—drawn largely from her autobiography—illuminate artworks that were deeply connected to the artist’s life.

The exhibition will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from Oct. 24 through July 12, 2026. It is organized by Leslie Umberger, senior curator of folk and self-taught art, and Randall Griffey, head curator, with support from curatorial assistant Maria R. Eipert. The exhibition will travel following its premiere in Washington, D.C.

“Grandma Moses was instrumental in bringing self-taught art to the forefront of American consciousness,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, Acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “As one of the first major museums to champion and collect works in this tradition, our museum is honored to shed new light on Grandma Moses’ practice and engage new generations by becoming a major resource for studying her art and legacy.”

“Moses was many things to many people: she was an ambassador for democratic American values, a folk hero and pop-culture celebrity, a comforting grandmotherly figure representing a bygone age, an inspiring elder reinventing herself in retirement and an untrained artist presenting what was then considered ‘modern primitivism’ as a surprisingly successful alternative to abstract art,”   Umberger said. “‘A Good Day’s Work’ reconciles these disparate truths while centering on Moses’ art and the life that inspired it—one shaped by ingenuity, labor, a doggedly positive outlook and a distilled understanding of a life well lived.” 

In a lifetime that spanned the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, the artist experienced seismic historical shifts, including the post-Reconstruction and civil rights eras and two world wars. She began painting in earnest in her late 70s and was 80 when gallerist Otto Kallir introduced her to the American public with her first solo exhibition. In her artworks, Moses melded direct observation of nature and life as she saw it, resulting in idiosyncratic, yet engaging, stories of America. “Grandma Moses” as the press would indelibly dub her, quickly became a media sensation, achieving a controversial celebrity status that surpassed the female artists of her day and remains compelling today.

Through a series of gifts and pledges of 15 important paintings from Kallir’s family, along with gifts from several additional donors and select museum purchases, the museum is establishing a destination-collection of 33 works by Moses, balanced across styles, dates, themes and historical moments. A major asset within the museum’s internationally recognized collection of work by folk and self-taught artists, the Moses collection will comprise significant works, from her earliest extant painting, “Untitled (Fireboard)” (1918), to iconic pieces including “Bringing in the Maple Sugar” (1939), “Black Horses” (1942) and “Out for Christmas Trees” (1946), to her last completed painting, “The Rainbow” (1961), all of which are represented in the exhibition. Also on view will be the first painting donated to the museum by the Kallir family in 2016, “Grandma Moses Goes to the Big City” (1946), a rare work in which Moses includes herself in the depicted narrative. The museum will be a premier Moses repository for scholars and the public.

About Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson Moses was born in Greenwich, New York, in 1860 and raised on a farm. From early in her life, she worked as a hired girl, helping neighbors and relatives with cleaning, cooking and sewing. As a child, her father had encouraged her to draw on old newsprint, and she used berry and grape juices to color her images. 

Robertson married at 27 and moved, with her new husband, Thomas Salmon Moses, to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. There, over the course of the next 18 years, the couple raised five children and worked as dairy farmers, shaping a highly successful butter-making business. Moses did not start painting until she was in her late 70s, after her children had moved on and her husband had died, looking for something, as she put it, with which “to keep busy and out of mischief.” She made paintings that merged fact with fiction and personal with national history, drawing on her own memories as well as family and local lore. She began her foray into the limelight by presenting her pictures at country fairs, alongside her prize-winning fruit preserves. 

In 1938, a collector saw her paintings in the window of a local pharmacy and bought them all. Two years later, Kallir—an art dealer and recent immigrant who had fled the Nazi regime in his native Austria—gave Moses her first solo exhibition. In the aftermath of World War II, Moses was seen as a global ambassador for democratic American values, and her unpretentious sensibilities and the scenes of family life and holidays enchanted a populace weary from conflict and rapid change. Following a press event and presentation of her paintings at Gimbels department store, the media dubbed her “Grandma Moses.” Gradually, ‘Grandma Moses’ became a household name. In 1947, Hallmark licensed the rights to reproduce her paintings on greeting cards. Reproductions on drapery fabric, china and other consumer goods followed, along with magazine features, television and radio interviews and an Academy Award-nominated documentary. Moses died at 101 in 1961, after painting more than 1,500 images. 

Publication

A richly illustrated catalog, published in association with Princeton University Press, will accompany the exhibition. It is co-edited by Umberger and Griffey, with a foreword by Carpenter-Rock and contributions by Erika Doss, Eleanor Jones Harvey, Stacy C. Hollander, Jane Kallir and Katherine Jentleson. The book will be available for purchase ($60) in the museum’s store and online.

Credit

“Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Major support is provided by the Herbert Waide Hemphill Jr. American Folk Art Fund. Generous support is provided by Bobbi and Ralph Terkowitz. Additional support is provided by Billings and John Cay, Josh Feldstein and Mischa Feldstein, William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund, Margery and Edgar Masinter Exhibitions Fund and Robert Pender. Educational programming support is provided in part by Douglas O. Robson. This project received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

About the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the flagship museum in the United States for American art and craft. It is home to one of the most significant collections of American art in the world. The museum’s main building, located at Eighth and G streets N.W., is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. The museum’s Renwick Gallery, a branch museum dedicated to contemporary craft, is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Check online for current hours and admission information. Admission is free. Follow the museum on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Website: americanart.si.edu.

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