BOCA RATON, FL.- What characterizes a "treasure" and what defines "greatness" in art? The criteria of a "treasure" - whether historical or contemporary - is decided by history. In these revisionist times, artworks, no matter how important they may have been at the time of their creation, are subject to reassessment of how we view the past.

On December 13, the Boca Raton Museum of Art opens American Treasures, an exhibition featuring thirty-six artworks by renowned American artists. The exhibition offers viewers the opportunity to review two centuries of artistic achievement and reflect on the diversity of period styles and individual voices that make up the history of American Art. These enduring masterworks help illuminate our view of modern and contemporary art, by refreshing our sense of historical aesthetic memory. American Treasures presents exquisite examples of old and modern American masterworks, as a checklist of ideas and social values, hopes, dreams and perceived realities.

Included are masterworks by Milton Avery, George Bellows, Albert Bierstadt, Charles Burchfield, Thomas Cole, John Steuart Curry, Thomas Eakins, Adolph Gottlieb, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Jack Levine, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Andy Warhol, and Andrew Wyeth among others.

The Butler Institute of American Art, located in Youngstown, Ohio, opened in 1919 as the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. It is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America's finest art museums, with holdings now exceeding 20,000 individual works, including important masterpieces spanning four centuries.