Solo show
Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents
4 Apr 2022 — 8 Jan 2023 at Metropolitan Museum of Art
· New York City
Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents was a major exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, during 2022–2023. Bringing together a wide selection of Homer's most celebrated works, the show offered a fresh and probing look at one of America's greatest painters.
The exhibition examined the crosscurrents of meaning in Homer's art — the tension between beauty and danger, leisure and labor, freedom and constraint — with particular attention to how race and social power shaped his imagery. Works spanning his long career revealed an artist deeply engaged with the turbulent currents of American life in the decades following the Civil War.
From his early depictions of Black Americans in the Reconstruction era to his sweeping seascapes and wilderness scenes, Homer's paintings were presented in new contexts that invited visitors to look again — and more critically — at a body of work long considered central to the American artistic canon.
The exhibition examined the crosscurrents of meaning in Homer's art — the tension between beauty and danger, leisure and labor, freedom and constraint — with particular attention to how race and social power shaped his imagery. Works spanning his long career revealed an artist deeply engaged with the turbulent currents of American life in the decades following the Civil War.
From his early depictions of Black Americans in the Reconstruction era to his sweeping seascapes and wilderness scenes, Homer's paintings were presented in new contexts that invited visitors to look again — and more critically — at a body of work long considered central to the American artistic canon.
About the artist
Winslow Homer
1836–1910 · realism
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters of 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art in general.
About the artist →About the venue
Metropolitan Museum of Art
· New York City
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5,727,258 visitors in fiscal year 2025, it was the most-visited museum in…
