This exhibition surveyed the trajectory of American art through 52 works from the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, which opened in New York in 1930. Beginning with Abstract Expressionism and extending through Color Field Painting, Pop Art, and Minimal Art, the exhibition traced the emergence of a wide range of experimental artistic practices. Centered in New York, American art underwent a dynamic development and continued to play a significant role internationally through its many transformations and innovations.
Through both solo and group exhibitions, the Seibu Museum of Art and later the Saison Museum of Art introduced new developments in postwar American art to Japanese audiences. These activities would eventually become one of the foundations of the collection of the Sezon Museum of Modern Art. Many artists featured in this exhibition—including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson, and Isamu Noguchi—would later become part of the Sezon Museum of Modern Art collection.