Posted #repost • @metmuseum On #LaborDay, a look at Thomas Hart Benton’s sweeping 1930s mural "America Today.” Benton’s ten-panel mural powerfully promotes the idea of "progress," as he perceived it, predicated on modern technology and dependent on manual and industrial labor. In most of its panels, the mural shows bodies of large, heroic workers building cities, mining coal, farming, working with steel, and sawing lumber, among other types of labor. Although Benton received no fee for his work on commission, he was "paid" with free eggs, the yolks from which he created the egg tempera paint. #painting #twentycentury #usa #notussr #DYK: Abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, then a student under Benton, was likely the model for the figure illuminated by firelight on the right side of this first panel. 🎨 Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889–1975) America Today, 1930–31. Ten panels: Egg tempera with oil glazing over Permalba on a gesso ground on linen mounted to wood panels with a honeycomb interior. Featured panels here: Steel, City Building, Coal, Deep South, Changing West, and Midwest. On view in Gallery 909. #MetModern #TheMet https://www.instagram.com/p/B2B926ioZ2v/?igshid=16vbqusbmyxd7















