30th Annual American Art Conference: Boundless Horizons

“Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars” -- Martin Luther King Jr, from “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” (1968).

For 30 years, Initiatives in Art and Culture (IAC)’s annual American Art Conference has been at the forefront of critical inquiry in the field, pushing the boundaries of accepted thinking and spotlighting pioneering perspectives. It has become the premier gathering of collectors, curators, dealers, museum professionals, academics, artists and everyone else interested in American Art.

We mark our 30th anniversary with Boundless Horizons, taking place May 14 – 16, 2026 in New York City, celebrating as well America’s semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding. In the Conference, we will revisit the notion of the “horizon” a concept central to American cultural identity and American Art. Through compelling and wide-ranging talks, panels, and conversations, we will explore how American art has been constantly invigorated by artists pushing against boundaries, leaving behind or aside the tropes of pilgrims, cowboys and pioneers, transcending limits and challenging artificial distinctions. Artists in the United States should be understood as being boundlessly engaged with limitless horizons, challenging Frederick Jackson’s Turner’s notion that in reaching the Pacific, the frontier closed and “the vital forces dominating American character” were no longer engaged.

American art has also pushed boundaries with respect to geography. Regions, locales, wilderness, and waterways have served as fruitful prompts or subjects for creative exploration. Region-specific approaches to Impressionism and Modernism have reshaped our understanding of those movements. And we’ll ask: should we now consider the United States in the context of a larger “continental” or even “hemispheric” movement?

As part of our exploration of boundaries, we’ll challenge the acceptance of “hierarchy of form.” Additionally, we’ll insist on the criticality of craft to art (rather than its separateness) and the importance of previously marginalized media, such as photography, fiber arts, and ceramics, as vital components of the canon. As new media—video, land, and performance art— flourish, we’ll explore their contributions. And we’ll view the stars and space as terrain worthy of artistic consideration. Finally, we’ll transcend the canvas to consider the frame and how it can both express an artist’s intentions and affect our experience of the work.

IAC’s 2026 American Art Conference, like those that have come before, is informed by the profound conviction that in American Art, reaching the end of one vista only reveals another, larger terra incognita, and American art—with respect to technique, subject, and medium— has persisted in a relentless quest into uncharted territory

Conference attendees will attend a private preview and reception for the American Art sale at Heritage Auctions and received an invitation to the Gala Opening of the American Art Fair at the land-marked Bohemian National Hall.

The 2026 Conference (May 14 – 16) coincides with the American Art Fair (May 16 – 19), TEFAF New York (May 15 – 19) and Frieze Art Fair (May 13 – 17) and is made possible by Leadership Funding from O’Brien Art Foundation and Anchor Sponsorship from Heritage Auctions.

We gratefully acknowledge Leadership Funding from O’Brien Art Foundation and Anchor Sponsorship from Heritage Auctions.

We are grateful as well for funding from D. Wigmore Fine Art; James Dicke II; Kenneth R. Woodcock; the Steven Alan Bennett Foundation; and anonymous donors (as of September 19, 2025).

We are deeply grateful for the media sponsorship provided by The Magazine ANTIQUES, and American Fine Art Magazine.

Please send inquiries to: [email protected] or call (646) 485-1952. Withdrawal and refunds: Notice of withdrawal must be made in writing to: Initiatives in Art and Culture, 333 East 57th Street, Suite 13B, New York, NY 10022 or to the Program Office via e-mail at [email protected], or call (646) 485-1952. No refunds will be made after April 14, 2026.

clockwise from top left: Arthur Garfield Dove, Moon, 1928, oil on board. Alfred Stieglitz Collection, co-owned by Fisk University, Nashville, TN and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Inc., Bentonville, Arkansas; Adelaide Alsop Robineau, Scarab Vase (The Apotheosis of the Toiler), 1910, porcelain, 16⅝× 6 in. Everson Museum Permanent Collection. Photo: courtesy of Everson Museum; Ruth Asawa, Installation View of “Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work,” 2018 – 2019. Pulitzer Arts Foundation 2018. Photo: © Alise O’Brien Photography, © Estate of Ruth Asawa, courtesy of the Estate of Ruth Asawa and David Zwirner; Margaret Foster Richardson, A Motion Picture, 1912, oil on canvas, 40¾ × 23⅛ in. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Henry D. Gilpin Fund; Georgia O’Keeffe, Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills (Ram’s Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico), 1935, oil on canvas, 30 × 36 in. Brooklyn Museum, bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal, 1992.11.28. Photo: Brooklyn Museum; Childe Hassam, West Wind, Isle of Shoals, 1904, oil on canvas, 15 × 22 in. Yale University Art Gallery, transfer from Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Bequest of Sinclair Lewis to the Collection of American Literature; Frederic Edwin Church, Cotopaxi, 1862, oil on canvas, 48 × 85 in. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, Gibbs-Williams Fund, Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Fund, Merrill Fund, Beatrice W. Rogers Fund, and Richard A. Manoogian Fund; Charles White, Love Letter III, 1977, color crayon and spray paint lithograph printed in four colors and screenprint with gradated inking, 301⁄16 × 22⅝ in. Art Institute Chicago, Margaret Fisher Fund.

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