8. American Gothic at The Whitney Museum of American Art

American Gothic is one of the country’s most iconic and recognizable works of 20th century art, and from March 2nd to June 10th, 2018, the painting will be on exhibit at The Whitney Museum of American Art. The painting is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, which “almost never lets American Gothic leave their museum,” said Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art at the press preview today.

The portrait of a Midwestern farm couple (a father and daughter, in actuality), with the man holding the pitchfork starting right at the viewer and the woman looking slightly askance, has been appropriated and re-appropriated countless times, often used to define a lost yet quintessential Americana or, as the Whitney Museum writes, “the unresolved tensions of the American experience.”