Flood

Inscriptions

Signed, on stone, lower left: Benton; signed, in graphite, lower right margin: Benson; Watermark, lower right: RIVES

Label

This print draws attention to the devastation caused by the Ohio and Mississippi River Valley Flood of 1937, which submerged great sections of southeast Missouri’s farms and lowlands. Thomas Hart Benton made a series of drawings of the flood conditions for the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post Dispatch. This lithograph, based on one of these documentary drawings, portrays two women assessing their flooded farmstead as the river rushes by.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Marlene Heck, Winter 2012

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Mary Coffey, Winter 2014

ARTH 17, The Power of Place: Urban and Rural Images in American Art, 1900-1945, Sarah Powers, Winter 2014

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–April 18, 2022.

Catalogue Raisonne

C. Fath, The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton, Austin, 1979, no. 16.

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Subjects