30th Annual American Art Conference: Boundless Horizons

“Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars” -- Martin Luther King Jr, from “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” (1968).

For 30 years, Initiatives in Art and Culture (IAC)’s annual American Art Conference has been at the forefront of critical inquiry in the field, pushing the boundaries of accepted thinking and spotlighting pioneering perspectives. It has become the premier gathering of collectors, curators, dealers, museum professionals, academics, artists and everyone else interested in American Art.

We mark our 30th anniversary with Boundless Horizons, taking place May 14 – 16, 2026 in New York City, celebrating as well America’s semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding. In the Conference, we will revisit the notion of the “horizon” a concept central to American cultural identity and American Art. Through compelling and wide-ranging talks, panels, and conversations, we will explore how American art has been constantly invigorated by artists pushing against boundaries, leaving behind or aside the tropes of pilgrims, cowboys and pioneers, transcending limits and challenging artificial distinctions. Artists in the United States should be understood as being boundlessly engaged with limitless horizons, challenging Frederick Jackson’s Turner’s notion that in reaching the Pacific, the frontier closed and “the vital forces dominating American character” were no longer engaged.

American art has also pushed boundaries with respect to geography. Regions, locales, wilderness, and waterways have served as fruitful prompts or subjects for creative exploration. Region-specific approaches to Impressionism and Modernism have reshaped our understanding of those movements. And we’ll ask: should we now consider the United States in the context of a larger “continental” or even “hemispheric” movement?

As part of our exploration of boundaries, we’ll challenge the acceptance of “hierarchy of form.” Additionally, we’ll insist on the criticality of craft to art (rather than its separateness) and the importance of previously marginalized media, such as photography, fiber arts, and ceramics, as vital components of the canon. As new media—video, land, and performance art— flourish, we’ll explore their contributions. And we’ll view the stars and space as terrain worthy of artistic consideration. Finally, we’ll transcend the canvas to consider the frame and how it can both express an artist’s intentions and affect our experience of the work.

IAC’s 2026 American Art Conference, like those that have come before, is informed by the profound conviction that in American Art, reaching the end of one vista only reveals another, larger terra incognita, and American art—with respect to technique, subject, and medium— has persisted in a relentless quest into uncharted territory.

Conference attendees will attend a private preview and reception for the American Art sale at Heritage Auctions and received an invitation to the Gala Opening of the American Art Fair at the land-marked Bohemian National Hall. Participants will also attend an exclusive viewing of “The Founders of American Abstract Artists, a 90th Anniversary Celebration” at D. Wigmore Fine Arts, Paintings, reliefs, sculptures, collages, and drawings from 1935 – 1945 by members of the group.

The 2026 Conference (May 14 – 16) coincides with the American Art Fair (May 16 – 19), TEFAF New York (May 15 – 19) and Frieze Art Fair (May 13 – 17)

Participants as of April 13:

Michelle Arcari Rose, Executive Director, Washington Heritage Museums, Board member, Living New Deal

Tony Abeyta, contemporary Navajo Diné artist

Amanda C. Burdan, Senior Curator, Brandywine Museum of Art (BRMA)

Wanda M. Corn, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History Emerita, Stanford University

Robert Cozzolino, independent curator, art historian, and critic

Kristin deGhetaldi, conservator of paintings

Erika Doss, Distinguished Chair, Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, University of Texas, Dallas

Kathleen Foster, Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator and Director of the Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jennifer Gibson, former Director, U.S. General Services Administration’s Center for Fine Arts

Randy Griffey, Director, American Art, The Luce Foundation

Anne Helmreich, Director, Smithsonian's Archives of American Art

Garth Johnson, Curator of Ceramics at Everson Museum of Art-Syracuse

Laura Katzman, professor of art history, James Madison University, curator of and author of Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity.

Larry List, writer and independent curator, author of Permanent Attraction: Man Ray & Chess

John P. Murphy, Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, author of New Deal Art: Culture and Crisis in the Great Depression (2025)

Asma Naeem, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA)

Mark Nelson, book designer and author (with Sarah Hudson Bayliss) of Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia M**der (2006)

David Olin, Conservator, Olin Conservation, Inc

Laura Polucha, Director, The Illustrated Gallery (Amber, PA)

Jami C. Powell, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art, Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth

Joyce J. Scott, sculptor and jewelry artist, 2016 MacArthur Fellow

Dan Shogren, collector, with his wife Susan Meyer, of WPA painting and photography; their collection is now the focus of Built to Last: The Shogren-Meyer Collection of American Art, an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

Suzanne Smeaton, pioneer in the study and scholarship of America period frames

Janneken Smucker, professor of history, West Chester University

Don Stinson, Austin-based artist known for panoramic oil paintings

Lowery Stokes Sims, specialist in modern and contemporary art, craft and design

Andrew J. Walker, former Executive Director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art

We gratefully acknowledge Leadership Funding from O’Brien Art Foundation and Anchor Sponsorship from Heritage Auctions.

We are grateful as well for funding from D. Wigmore Fine Art; James Dicke II; Kenneth R. Woodcock; the Steven Alan Bennett Foundation; CW American Moderism; Collisart, LLC and anonymous donors (as of April 17, 2026).

We are deeply grateful for the media sponsorship provided by The Magazine ANTIQUES, and American Fine Art Magazine.

Please send inquiries to: [email protected] or call (646) 485-1952. Withdrawal and refunds: Notice of withdrawal must be made in writing to: Initiatives in Art and Culture, 333 East 57th Street, Suite 13B, New York, NY 10022 or to the Program Office via e-mail at [email protected], or call (646) 485-1952. No refunds will be made after April 14, 2026.

Image captions (clockwise from top left and, where applicable, top to bottom)

Image details (clockwise from upper left, and where applicable, up and down): Image details (clockwise from upper left, and where applicable, up and down): Roger Anliker, A Midnight Icarus and Mermaid, 1968 – 1983, gouache on Fabriano paper, 24 x 34 in. Photo: courtesy of the Estate of Roger Anliker; Adelaide Alsop Robineau, Scarab Vase (The Apotheosis of the Toiler), 1910, porcelain, 16⅝ × 6 in. Everson Museum Permanent Collection. Photo: courtesy of Everson Museum; Charles Willson Peale, Staircase Group (Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titan Ramsay Peale I), 1795, oil on canvas, 89½ x 39⅜ in. The George W. Elkins Collection, 1945, Philadelphia Art Museum; Joyce J. Scott, War, What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothin, Say it Again, 2022, peyote stitch, glass beads, thread. Model: Aisha Butler. Photo: © Jeff Butler, courtesy of Mobilia Gallery; Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, oil on beaver board, 30¾ x 25¾ in. Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection, 1930.934. Photo: courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago; Don Stinson, Lone Star and Pool: Lobos Texas, 2000, oil on wood panel, 36 x 72 in.; Thomas Moran, Green River Cliffs, 1881, oil on canvas, 25 x 62 in. National Gallery of Art. Gift of Milligan and Thomas Families; Seymour Fogel, The Security of the People, 1941, WPA mural in the Cohen Building, Washington, DC, General Services Administration Fine Arts Collection, commissioned through the Section of Fine Arts, 1934 – 1943. Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Heritage Auctions, 445 Park Ave., New York, United States

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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