A painting by Georgia O'Keeffe. "Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico" is a modern art oil on canvas painting featuring a New Mexico landscape. Georgia O’Keeffe was among the most influential figures in Modernism, best known for her large-format paintings of natural forms, especially flowers and bones, and for her depictions of New York City skyscrapers and architectural and landscape forms unique to northern New Mexico.

A painting by father and son N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth. "Puritan Cod Fishers" is a 20th century painting from N.C. Wyeth's commission of murals for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife). Andrew Wyeth completed the painting following the death of his father. This is the only painting Andrew completed after N.C.'s death in this series.

"The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620" is a painting by American artist N.C. Wyeth.

Before there was television and of a time when film was still in its infancy, N. C. Wyeth’s illustrations electrified the stories he visually shaped and annotated. As a young reader of “Treasure Island,” who can deny the urgency to read on to the next glossy illustration? Or, in excited anticipation, thumb through the pages repeatedly to the pictures ahead, so alive and vivid and full of bravado?

In 1939, The Metropolitan Life Company offered Wyeth a commission of a different sort; a series of canvas murals that would rely less on bravado perhaps, but instead, a deep sense of time and place. They would offer an energetic and grand vision and express the spirit of national pride by celebrating the strong values that express what it means to be American. Wyeth was thrilled. The fourteen mural panels he agreed to produce would bring the world of Pilgrims to glowing life and “serve as a graphic and dramatic expression of the spirit of New England” (Douglas Allen, et al., N. C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations, and Murals, pg. 169). Wyeth, an artist of unparalleled skill and fully invested in the authenticity of the characters that populate his narratives, relished the opportunity to convey the pride he felt toward his ancestral past.

“The romance of early colonization, especially that of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, had always excited me. My ancestor, Nicholas Wyeth, came from Wales to Massachusetts in 1647. The spirit of early days on the Massachusetts coast was an oft-discussed subject in my home. I was born in Needham, not far from the town of Plymouth, to which I made many pilgrimages during my boyhood, spending thrilling days in and around that historic territory. With this as a background, it was natural that in my mind and heart should fly to Plymouth and to the Pilgrims as a fitting subject for a series of New England paintings. If then, the warmth and appeal of these paintings is apparent to those who study them, it is principally because they are, in some related way, a statement of my own life and heritage.” (Douglas Allen, et al., N. C. Wyeth: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals, pg. 171)

N.C. Wyeth had achieved preeminence as a mural painter earlier in the 1930s. But the scale and scope of the so-called “New England Series” is a landmark achievement. The story he tells is of shared community, of family, of differing cultures, and courage in the face of great adversity. Installed throughout the common areas of the company’s North Building New York headquarters on Madison Square, the panels were placed at eye level so that they not only served as companions for hundreds of MetLife employees but as invitations to enter the scenes vicariously. The murals remained virtually unseen by the public until 1986 when they were removed, conserved, and exhibited at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York. Still later, in 1991, reproductions of the murals inspired an author to write an accompanying text for N. C. Wyeth’s Pilgrims, a landscape-formatted storybook that utilizes reproductions of the panels to illustrate the bravery of one hundred and two passengers who arrived, and whose ranks were reduced by half their number the first winter, weathered illness, privation, and adversity of every kind to endure and become what is essentially the founding of America.

Wyeth was to devote much of his last years to the Metropolitan Life murals. Yet he was not destined to see its completion when his life ended tragically on a railroad crossing during a morning drive in October 1945. Intent upon seeing his father’s final project finished, son Andrew and son-in-law, John W. McCoy completed the remaining four murals — a fitting memorial to perhaps the greatest American artist of the golden age of illustration.

"Forgotten Thoughts" is a butterfly painting by Damien Hirst. The painting is signed, dated and titled verso, "Forgotten Thoughts, 2008, Damien Hirst (Encircled Hirst cross symbol)". The framed piece measures 69 1/2 x 69 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. A leading figure in the Young British Artists movement in the late 1980s and 1990s, Damien Hirst (born 1965 in Bristol, England) became controversial for his dead animal displays and spin paintings. Raised Catholic in Leeds, he had a well-pronounced dark side as a child, when he showed an interest in the gruesome aspects of life. In 1988, while studying art at Goldsmith’s College at the University of London, he assembled a ground-breaking exhibition featuring works by Fiona Rae, Sarah Lucas, and others, as well as his own. They became known as the YBAs, distinguished by their use of unusual materials and for their challenging art concepts. Advertising mogul and art collector Charles Saatchi started investing in Hirst’s work. Following his first solo show at London’s Woodstock Street Gallery in 1991, Hirst participated in the Young British Artists show at the Saatchi Gallery, famously exhibiting The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot-long glass tank with a shark preserved in formaldehyde. At the 1993 Venice Biennale, he showed Mother and Child Divided, an installation that featured a bisected cow and her calf displayed in four vitrines, or glass cases, filled with formaldehyde. He won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1995. In 2007, he unveiled For the Love of God, a diamond-encrusted skull made of platinum. Many critics were less than impressed with this “celebration against death,” as Hirst described. Others marveled at the anticipated selling price of $100 million. Hirst continues to make new work and exhibit around the world.

"Untitled" is an oil and oil stick on paper mounted to canvas made by Mary Abbott, c. 1951. The artwork size is 23 x 29 inches. The framed size is 24 1/2 x 30 1/2 x 2 inches. The work is signed in pencil, lower right, “Mary Abbott”.

Mary Abbott (b. 1921) was raised in New York and Washington, D. C. In the early 1940s, Abbott’s early interest in art led her to courses at the Art Students League where she worked with painters such as George Grosz. In 1948, she met the sculptor David Hare, who introduced her to an experimental school called The Subject of the Artist, an anti-school anyone could join if they left their academic artistic past behind them. Started by Hare, Rothko, Motherwell and Barnett Newman, they became her mentors and she moved into the heart of the New York avant-garde. Also, Abbott became a member of the Club, where she was one of three female members along with Perle Fine and Elaine de Kooning. In the early 1950s, she began to exhibit extensively and participated in three of the famous Stable Gallery annuals that promoted Abstract Expressionism.

"Untitled (Rope Dancer series)" is an acrylic on canvas made by Jack Roth in 1980. The artwork is 18 x 30 1/8 inches. It weighs less thn 50 lbs. The work is signed and dated in pencil, lower middle, "R 80" and also verso "Roth 80".

Roth paintings are recognizable for thin contour lines and soft forms, in addition to an expressive use of color. His compositions are carefully balanced, drawing the eye with a rhythmic flow that pulls viewers into the heart of the scene.