MEMPHIS, TN.- Regional Dialect: American Scene Paintings from the John and Susan Horseman Collection brings together 57 examples of American Scene painting and its antecedents, works that celebrated American identity and spirit during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, Regional Dialect will re-introduce extraordinary artists such as George Adomeit, Paul Cornoyer, Carl Gaertner, Birger Sandzen, Alice Schille, and Joseph Vorst and others, while revealing the reach and popularity of American Scene painting in the years between the two World Wars. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are structured thematically to reveal the shared concerns of Regionalist painters across the country. The five chapters are: Looking for the Regional Landscape, Americans at Work, The City of the American Scene, Children of the American Scene, and The Garden as Region.

The forty-three artists featured in Regional Dialect come from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, and elsewhere, but they painted wherever they found inspiration. These artists do not so much adhere to a single style as a common commitment to honestly portraying Americans and the great country they inhabit. From Depression-era sharecroppers, to the booming industrialism in the urban Midwest, to tender images of mothers and children, the exhibition reveals the scope of the Regionalist aesthetic and the vision and integrity each artist brought to the representation of the American experience.