The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., presents "Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work," an exhibition anchored by 33 works from the museum's own collection and organized by Leslie Umberger and Randall Griffey. The show features paintings by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961), an unschooled farmwife who began painting in her late seventies and became the most famous American woman painter of her day after dealer Otto Kallir gave her a first show in 1940. The exhibition runs through July 12, 2026, before traveling to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The exhibition matters because it attempts to reclaim Grandma Moses from the realm of greeting-card kitsch and reposition her as a serious, breakthrough figure in American art history. Staged against the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the show frames her life—spanning from Lincoln to Kennedy—as a parable of the nation. The article also notes that in a bear art market, popular artists like Bob Ross have seen unexpected auction interest, suggesting that the art world's pendulum may be swinging toward once-dismissed populist painters, making this reappraisal timely.