HAGERSTOWN, MD.- As the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts invites visitors to explore the nation's history through the eyes of its artists. Now open, Founding Artists, Founding Movements: 250 Years of Art in the United States is a comprehensive reinstallation of the museum's American galleries that traces the evolution of artistic expression in the United States from the Colonial era through the twentieth century.
Serving as the museum's signature contribution to the national Semiquincentennial, the exhibition is far more than a reinstallation of the permanent collection. Through paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, furniture, textiles, ceramics, and historical artifacts, Founding Artists, Founding Movements explores how artists documented, interpreted, and ultimately helped shape the American experience. The installation is designed to remain on view for approximately three years, serving as a cornerstone for educational programming and community engagement throughout the Semiquincentennial and after.
Tasked with considering the American collection around the semiquincentennial, Agnita M. Stine Schreiber Curator, Linda Johnson, Ph.D., reimagined the galleries around the rise of particular approaches to art, and considered how those developments reflected larger forces that shaped the nation's identity.
In September 2025, the Museum inaugurated its Semiquincentennial programming with In Nature's Studio: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting, an exhibition examining the profound relationship between landscape and the development of an American artistic identity. Featuring works spanning two hundred years, the exhibition explored how painters transformed the nation's rivers, mountains, forests, and countryside into enduring symbols of possibility, exploration, and national pride.
That exploration continued in March 2026 with Kindred Spirits: Artists in the Tenth Street Studio Building, a special installation presented in collaboration with Olana State Historic Site, the historic home and studio of Frederic Edwin Church. Created in celebration of Church's bicentennial, the exhibition examined one of the nineteenth century's most influential artistic communities, revealing how the painters, sculptors, illustrators, and innovators who worked within New York City's famed Tenth Street Studio Building collectively shaped the future of American art.
Founding Artists, Founding Movements now brings those stories together within a broader narrative spanning nearly 250 years.
"As we began rethinking these galleries, we weren't interested in simply rearranging works of art," said Dr. Johnson, "The Semiquincentennial gave us an opportunity to ask broader questions about how American art developed alongside the nation itself. We wanted visitors to see that artists did more than record history—they shaped how Americans understood their country, their communities, and themselves."
Founding Artists recognizes the painters, sculptors, craftspeople, and visionaries who established the traditions of American art while adapting inherited European practices to the realities of a new nation. Founding Movements acknowledges that artistic identity is never static. As the United States grew and changed, so too did its artists. New schools of thought emerged. Traditional hierarchies gave way to innovation. Regional voices found national audiences. Artists increasingly looked inward for inspiration while also engaging with ideas from around the world.
Throughout Founding Artists, Founding Movements, visitors encounter extraordinary works of art and historical objects that serve as milestones in the nation's artistic and cultural development. Rather than functioning simply as individual masterpieces, these works were selected because each represents a larger chapter in the story of the United States.
Among the exhibition's remarkable loans is an eighteenth-century China punch bowl, with reputed history of ownership by Charles Carrol from George Washington's Mount Vernon. Elegant in both form and decoration, the vessel reminds visitors that the young United States was never culturally isolated. Long before American manufacturers developed comparable luxury goods, imported porcelain arriving through the China Trade represented wealth, refinement, and international commerce. Objects such as this reveal how global exchange influenced American taste while demonstrating the expanding commercial networks that connected the new nation to Asia, Europe, and the Atlantic world. The punch bowl also illustrates one of the exhibition's central ideas—that the story of American art extends well beyond paintings and sculpture to include the decorative arts that shaped everyday life and reflected changing social aspirations.
Visitors quickly discover that national history is also deeply rooted in local history. One of the exhibition's most compelling objects is the richly Embroidered Waistcoat worn by Captain Jonathan Hager, founder of Hagerstown. Delicately embellished with silk embroidery and silver sequins, the garment offers an intimate glimpse into eighteenth-century craftsmanship, fashion, and personal identity.
Throughout the galleries, visitors will find several interpretations of different American “Founding Fathers” and influential political leaders. A distinguished Portrait of Andrew Jackson invites visitors to consider how artists influenced public perceptions of political leadership during the nineteenth century. Long before photography became commonplace, painted portraits served as the primary visual record of statesmen and public figures, helping define their legacy for generations of Americans. In addition, a 1913 bronze sculpture of Benjamin Franklin sat on a bench in contemplation, a bronze Equestrian Sculpture of the Marquis de Lafayette preparing to ride into battle, and a portrait bust of George Washington modeled in appearance reminiscent to a Roman senator highlight projected ideals of innovation, statesmanship, and intellectual curiosity. The exhibition encourages visitors to look beyond likeness alone and consider how portraiture in its many forms communicated authority, character, and national ideals.
As visitors continue through the galleries, the nation's rapid transformation during the nineteenth century becomes visible through the rise of American landscape painting. One of the exhibition's signature works, Lower Manhattan from Communipaw, New Jersey, captures a nation experiencing extraordinary economic growth, technological innovation, and urban expansion. Looking across New York Harbor toward one of America's emerging industrial centers, the painting embodies the deep seated concerns about the degradation of the American landscape shared by many Hudson River Valley School landscape painters of the time. It also serves as a natural bridge between the themes explored in the Museum's earlier exhibition, In Nature's Studio: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting, and the broader narrative presented in Founding Artists, Founding Movements.
The exhibition then follows the nation's artistic evolution into the twentieth century, where portraiture itself underwent dramatic transformation. Alice Neel's Olivia demonstrates how American artists increasingly moved beyond formal likenesses to explore personality, psychology, and emotional presence. One of the country's most celebrated modern portraitists, Neel approached her sitters with extraordinary honesty and empathy, redefining portraiture for a new generation. Her work illustrates the exhibition's broader argument that American artists continually challenged inherited traditions while expanding the possibilities of artistic expression.
These featured works represent only a small portion of the more than two centuries of artistic achievement presented throughout the galleries. Visitors will also encounter portraits by Colonial masters, mourning embroideries that reveal the intersection of Classical traditions and American customs, furniture crafted by skilled cabinetmakers, silver, clocks, ceramics, military artifacts, sculpture, and paintings spanning movements from the Colonial era through Impressionism, Regionalism, Urban and Social Realism, Precisionism, Abstract Expressionism, and beyond. Together, these objects reveal that American art is not the story of a single movement or a handful of celebrated artists. It is the story of a nation continually defining—and redefining—itself through creativity.
"Our collection has always contained extraordinary works of art," said Dr. Johnson, "What this installation allows us to do is place those works into conversation with one another. Visitors begin to see relationships between paintings and decorative arts, between local history and national history, and between individual artists and the broader movements that shaped American culture. Those connections are what make this exhibition so rewarding to explore."
Now open to the public, the installation reflects the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts' longstanding commitment to interpreting art within its historical, cultural, and social context. Throughout its history, the Museum has sought not only to preserve remarkable works of art, but also to foster curiosity, encourage scholarship, and create meaningful connections between its collections and the communities they serve. Founding Artists, Founding Movements advances that mission by presenting American art as a living narrative—one that invites visitors to ask questions, reconsider familiar stories, and discover new perspectives with every visit.
"Our goal was to create galleries that reward curiosity," said Dr. Johnson. "Whether someone has spent a lifetime studying American art or is visiting an art museum for the first time, we hope they leave with a deeper understanding of the connections between artists, history, and the American experience."
Whether encountering the collection for the first time or returning to rediscover familiar favorites, visitors are invited to experience the galleries with fresh eyes. Every object, every gallery, and every interpretive panel contributes to a larger story—one of artists responding to a changing nation while helping shape the way generations of Americans have understood themselves and their place in the world.
Founding Artists, Founding Movements: 250 Years of Art in the United States is now open at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts and will remain on view through 2029.
