Featuring paintings by American icons like Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, this book illustrates the ways American artists have viewed themselves, their peers, and their painted worlds over 200 years.

Museums are public places where objects, images and memories are kept and shared. They exist in infinite variety and contradiction. They can be places of great excitement and great boredom, sharply insightful and hopelessly bland. Museums are anything that the political climate and the imagination allows them to be. No two museums are the same. The papers which make up this volume give ample evidence of the variety of views that exist about museums. They also demonstrate that museums and museum professionals are moving forward with energy and conviction. This volume will be invaluable to students and museum professionals and will provoke them to consider museum provision and professionalism in all their forms.