MILWAUKEE, WI.- Today, the Milwaukee Art Museum presents some of the greatest works ever produced by American artists when more than 90 paintings and sculptures from the Detroit Institute of Arts arrive on tour. In its relatively short history, America has produced a vibrant and diverse visual tradition of its own, with fact, pragmatism, awe and a description of place at the heart of its artistic production. European settlers in this new land sought to reinvent notions of government, religion, society and even art, as they forged a uniquely American style and definition of beauty. Visitors will have an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate America's best in a visually stunning exhibition of painting and sculpture from the period in which American art was born and came into its own.

The show includes such iconic masterpieces as John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark, Frederic Church's Cotopaxi, and Winslow Homer's Defiance: Inviting A Shot Before Petersburg. Also featured are great examples by many other figures of American art between 1770 and 1920: still life master Raphaelle Peale; landscapists Thomas Cole and Martin Johnson Heade; sculptor Hiram Powers; genre painters George Caleb Bingham and Eastman Johnson; Philadelphia genius Thomas Eakins; American Impressionists John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, and Mary Cassatt; and Ashcan School artists Robert Henri and George Bellows, to name only a few. MAM will be reinstalling its own American paintings galleries to coincide with this important exhibition.