Introduction 

Barbara Haskell: I'm Barbara Haskell. I'm a curator at the Whitney Museum and the curator of the exhibition At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism. 

One of the ideas of the exhibition was to take a look at this explosion of energy that happened at the turn of the century, this idea that people were really at the dawn of something new, something that hadn't happened before. They’re rejecting the past, and there was a sense of unlimited opportunity, unlimited possibilities. And the work reflects that through these bright colors and sensual shapes and exploding forms.

The show is also one that allows the Whitney to reassess its collection and to reassess the period the show will include famous artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, artists that are fairly known to the public. But it will also include artists who were equally groundbreaking at that moment, but have been largely forgotten, and in some cases have been in storage for decades. There's some work in the exhibition that has only been shown once the entire time we've had it at the Museum. And we've also been able to use the exhibition as an occasion to acquire new work, to fill in the gaps that still exist. When the Whitney started to collect modernism they embraced essentially male artists, so that a lot of female artists, artists of color were not part of that collection even our collection now. This exhibition has given us a chance to look at those gaps and to begin to re-address them.