20th Century Popular Works continued 2

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975).

An Artist in America.  New York: R.M. McBride & Company [c1937].

Thomas Hart Benton, one of the most famous artists in America in the 1930s, published his autobiographical An Artist in America in 1937, with new editions in 1951 and 1968.  An Artist in America is not only a travel narrative of America and its people, but a way for Benton to improve the image of artists in America, by showing what a regular, hard-working man he was.

Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and Nancy Newhall (1908-1974).

This Is the American Earth.  San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1971, c1960.

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist who is most famous for his photographs of America’s National Parks.  David Brower, executive director of the Sierra Club when This Is the American Earth was originally published in 1960, noted that this work was “what the Sierra Club, since its founding in 1892 by John Muir, has been seeking on behalf of the nation's scenic resources and needs to pursue harder in the times to come.”  Adams was also on the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club.  This Is the American Earth was considered one of the works instrumental in reawakening the conservation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  Nancy Newhall, a writer and photographic historian, wrote the accompanying text.