upcoming exhibition SUPERNATURAL AMERICA: THE PARANORMAL IN AMERICAN ART October 7, 2021 – January 2, 2022 Supernatural America examines the artwork that has shaped our collective imagination of the supernatural and paranormal and asks why America is haunted. Ghosts of a violent US history, whether Native American genocide, slavery, or the Civil War, remain unsettled and periodically resurface to make the present face the past. In intimate moments of mourning, the will to make contact with spirits of the dead drove cultures of mediumship, new ritual
explores the numerous ways artists in the U.S. made
practices, and a popular culture around Spiritualism.
sense of their own experiences of the paranormal and
Artists have been integral to visualizing these ghosts,
supernatural, and in doing so developed a rich visual
whether national or personal, and in doing so have
culture of the intangible.
embraced the mysterious and unexplained. In the twentieth century, anxieties about technology, atomic weapons, and the trauma of war inspired ideas about worlds beyond a troubled America. This exhibition
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Agatha Wojciechowsky. American (born Germany), 1896-1986. aw 0323, 1963. Watercolor on paper. Courtesy of the Collection of Steven Day, New York, NY
