When Old is New: American Art Reconsidered brings together familiar and lesser-known works by American artists from The AGB’s Permanent Collection with loans from the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, Kansas to create new conversations across artists, generations, styles, and ideas. With works spanning from the late19th through the early 21st century, this exhibition reflects a continually changing America and the many ways artists have responded to ideas about the nation, its culture, and what it even means to be “American.” From portraiture, landscape, and realism to abstraction, Pop Art, and appropriation (the practice of using pre-existing objects or images in new works of art), American art has continually been reconsidered and reinvented.

Rather than presenting this history chronologically, this exhibition places artwork in fresh juxtapositions and invites new interpretations—and conversations— of both the individual object and the larger histories they represent. Unexpected connections emerge through subject, material, composition, and shared ideas and encourage familiar works to be seen from new perspectives.

Museums continually shape how art is understood through what they collect, display, and place in conversation. By presenting works from two collections in dialogue, When Old Is New invites us to look again and consider how changing the company a work keeps can change the way we see it.