The United States of America is an immigrant society, and has been since the beginnings of European settlement in the late 16th century. English, French, Spanish, Italians, Africans, Chinese, Japanese and everyone else have been carrying parts of their past, their inherited or remembered culture, into America for the past 400 years. As a result, American art tells the American story: Americans, like any other people, inscribe their histories, beliefs, attitudes, desires and dreams in the images they make.
At first, the story is one of displacement and adaptation. The severe, timber-framed houses of the New England Puritans are the same...