Back | Events
Macho Men: Hypermasculinity in Dutch & American Prints at Philadelphia Museum of Art
Hugo Gellert, Untitled, Savage Legislation Against The Expropriated From The End Of The Fifteenth Century Onwards, 1933
Sat, Aug 27 - Mon, Mar 20 2023
The Philadelphia Museum of Art opened Macho Men: Hypermasculinity in Dutch & American Prints. The exhibition showcases prints about masculinity from the Netherlands around 1600 and the United States around 1930, exploring themes of nationalism, labor, and homoeroticism.
The prints are on view until March 20, 2023. More info and tickets here.
About Macho Men: Hypermasculinity in Dutch & American Prints
Around 1590, a group of artists in the Dutch Republic began making images of big, muscly men that embodied ideas of manhood and citizenship. Much later, artists in the United States during the Great Depression also depicted brawny he-men, celebrating the strength and endurance of the working class. Though separated by centuries, the prints in this exhibition are strikingly similar in subject matter and in their nationalist and homoerotic undertones.
See how artists from vastly different historical moments turned robust male physiques into symbols loaded with meaning. This exhibition explores important questions about masculinity, labor, and nationhood: What can these images of macho men tell us about the artists and contexts that produced them? And how do new understandings of masculinity and sexuality change the ways we see them today?
Hendrick Goltzius, The Farnese Hercules, c. 1592 (published 1617).
Michael Gallagher, The Sculptor, c. 1937, Published by Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, Philadelphia.