Behold, America!

Behold, America! is an ambitious collaboration between three prominent San Diego art museums. Bringing together the best works from the American art collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The San Diego Museum of Art and the Timken Museum of Art, this publication and its accompanying exhibition takes a dynamic look at three centuries of visual art created in the United States. Behold, America! (a title borrowed from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass) conveys how artists have addressed colonialism, environmentalism and racial inequality over the years, and evokes the natural landscape of the United States, imperialism and some of the more infamous aspects of American culture. Whether emerging from colonialism or civil war, visual artists working in the U.S. have contributed to a national identity that continues to be renegotiated to this day.