CHARLOTTE, NC.- The Mint Museums present the exhibit Encouraging American Genius Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery through December 31. Featuring 74 works, Encouraging American Genius is organized into roughly chronological thematic groupings to demonstrate the Corcoran Gallery's strengths in colonial and federal portraiture, nineteenth-century landscape and genre painting, and early twentieth-century realism. Among the notable artists included are Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, John Sloan and Edward Hopper.

In addition to these three major groupings, the exhibition highlights a number of outstanding individual works by American masters. From famed early portraitists John Singleton Copley and Joshua Johnson, to American Barbizon painter George Inness and trompe-l'oeil master William Harnett, to modernist greats Maurice Prendergast, Thomas Hart Benton and Marsden Hartley, Encouraging American Genius presents a remarkable selection of American paintings from the Corcoranís collection.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art was founded in 1869 as Washington's first museum of art. It is a privately funded institution incorporating both a museum and college of art and design. As one of America's oldest art institutions, the institution is known internationally for its distinguished collection of historical and modern American art. The Corcoran also houses outstanding collections of contemporary art; photography and media arts; and European fine and decorative arts.”