The Midnight Mass, 1911 by Edward Timothy Hurley, Cincinnati Art Museum.
A beautiful night time snow scene showing the rooftops and the majority of the light coming from the church as the faithful have left their homes to attend.
Intolerance
Daughters of the Revolution by Grant Wood, Cincinnati Art Museum.
Wood pokes fun at the prim and proper ladies and their intolerance. This is the only "satire" Wood owned up to, but many of his other works fit that definition too, even the beloved American Gothic.
Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, Chicago Institute of Art.
Avalon
Lucy Ferry, 1986 by Robert Mapplethorpe© The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
Mapplethorpe's work created a huge controversy when some of his work was deemed obscene in Cincinnati in 1990.
Breaking Ground by Making Art
Gateway, Tangier by Henry Ossawa Tanner, c. 1912, The St. Louis Art Museum.
Tanner studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which was highly unusual for an African American at this time. He was also lucky enough to study under Thomas Eakins, who revolutionized the way that art was taught and influenced many. Robert Henri, founder of the Ashcan School, was also a student at the same time. Tanner felt the burden of post-slavery racism (his mother was a slave who had escaped through the Underground Railroad, even in the north, and decided to strike-out for France, where he spent most of his life. He continued his studies at The Louvre where the great French masters, such as Gustave Courbet, influenced his work further.