The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art will celebrate the art of the  Midwest with the exhibition “Bingham to Benton: The Midwest as  Muse” February 5 to July 31.   The Midwest has inspired artists for two centuries, and its  landscape and ways of life have played an important role in  shaping the image of America.   “Bingham to Benton: The Midwest as Muse” pays homage to the  artistic accomplishments of Missouri’s best-know painters, George  Caleb Bingham and Thomas Hart Benton. The body of works on view  attests to the region’s imprint on a spectrum of artists who  worked in the nation’s heartland through World War II.   George Caleb Bingham was among the first American artists to live  west of the Mississippi River, and with his scenes of frontier  life, he earned the distinction of “the Missouri artist” by the  mid Nineteenth Century, and representing this phase of Bingham’s  career is “The Jolly Flatboatmen,” on loan from the Richard and  Jane Manoogian Collection.   The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is at 4525 Oak Street. For  information, 816-751-1278 or www.nelson-atkins.org.
 
    



 
						