What Was America? Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era

Where is art going, who is it for, and what can it tell us about our world? To think these questions through, we might begin by looking back Published this month, Elise Armani and Katy Siegel’s book What Was America? offers a prismatic view of American art and culture in the years leading up to the 1976 Bicentennial. Over ten years of planning, the Bicentennial inspired and supported an unprecedented culture boom across the United States, as artists, designers, performers, historians, writers, and participants of all kinds wrestled with the pressing issues of the day, including the environment, immigration, heritage, media, and what it means to be American. From individual art works and blockbuster exhibitions to community quilts and time capsules, projects unfolded across wildly disparate venues, demographics, and geographies, eliciting mass participation in negotiating US history and imagining the nation’s future. Many of the questions asked in 1976 resemble those of 2026, but the responses offered in that earlier moment make for an electric contrast with those of our own present—they also hold genuine potential for remaking our own future. Armani and Siegel will be joined by Lauren O’Neill-Butler in a lively conversation about artists, communities, and citizens at a moment when art and culture were seen (and supported) as a civic good. RESERVATIONS: Admission is free but reservations are required. ACCESSIBILITY: This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. To request free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service, email your request at least three weeks in advance of the event to [email protected]. About the Speakers Elise Armani is the Assistant Curator for Twentieth Century Art at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska and a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her forthcoming book, What Was America? Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era (Yale University Press, 2026), co-written with Katy Siegel, was awarded a 2026 Publication Grant from the Wyeth Foundation of American Art. Lauren O’Neill-Butler is a New York-based writer and editor. Her books include Let’s Have a Talk: Conversations with Women on Art and Culture (Karma, 2021) and The War of Art: A History of Artists’ Protest in America (Verso, 2025), which was named one of the best books of 2025 by NPR, Observer, and Colossal, and one of the most influential books on United States history by the Brooklyn Public Library. She received a Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant in 2020 and the Beverley Art Writers Travel Grant in 2023. Katy Siegel is a scholar of postwar art and Distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University. Her curated exhibitions have appeared at institutions across the US and Europe, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum to the Venice Biennale, and include Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture; Joan Mitchell; Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day; Postwar: Art Between the Atlantic and the Pacific, 1945-1965; and High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975. Her writing focuses on the social questions raised by art’s making and histories, most recently in essays for the New Museum New Humans catalog and Artforum; among her books are Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed, and “The Heroine Paint”: After Frankenthaler. Image: Students paint a Bicentennial mural at Royal Green Elementary in Miami, June 1977. Photograph by Tim Chapman.