[Music] what's really unique about this exhibition is the opportunity to look at some truly iconic paintings that come from America painted in the 1930s that capture a moment of huge transition and change this is a time when artists and not just artists but the whole of society are coming to turn terms with big change and wondering how best to move forward how to confront the future so the exhibition is called America after the fall the fall being of course the great crash that happened in 1929 and the consequences that were felt and reverberated throughout the country for the following decade the idea of the exhibition is really to capture the sense of profound shock to the economic social system but then also the the manner in which America starts to reorganize to regroup if you like and the changes that are taking place changes in Immigration changes in urbanization and also changes in the kind of industrialization uh process of the country I suppose the names that most people recognize would be Edward Hopper Jackson Pollock Philip gust um Thomas Hart Benton George O'Keefe Alice Neil artists that have been justly lorded and collected and displayed throughout American museums from the 1930s onwards but perhaps the most single most iconic work coming to the exhibition is a painting by an artist called Grant Wood the painting itself I'm sure most people would recognize called American [Music] Gothic so American Gothic is a painting that was painted in 1930 and entered the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago that same year so they've had it ever since it's never ever before or left North America it's been to Canada once in its lifetime so this is a real historic moment that is coming to Europe for the first time it's a painting of a couple standing in front of a barn so it's a kind of rural scene and if you like it I think it's an image that captures the change that's taking place in America the change from rural based society with profound belief in the land and the whole notion of the kind of settling of the land and the change that that's that's taking place so this captures a moment if you like it's a kind of golden moment looking back with nostalgia in the past it is without doubt one of the most celebrated and copied paintings ever [Music] painted what's really exciting for us is that there is an opportunity to show really great painting ings from American museums that are rarely seen in this country shown together for the first time to give us a very condensed but very Dynamic image of what American art was like in the [Music] 1930s