Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents

Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 11 April - 31 July 2022

Long celebrated as the quintessential New England regionalist, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) in fact brushed a much wider canvas, traveling throughout the Atlantic world and frequently engaging in his art with issues of race, imperialism, and the environment.

Featuring 88 oils and watercolors, this exhibition catalogue focuses, for the first time, on works Homer made during visits to Bermuda, Cuba, coastal Florida, and the Bahamas. Among these, The Gulf Stream (1899), often considered the most consequential painting of his career, reveals Homer's lifelong fascination with struggle and conflict.

Recognizing the artist's keen ability to distill complex issues, this book upends popular conceptions and convincingly argues that Homer's work resonates with the challenges of the present day.