The Norton Museum of Art’s founder, Ralph Norton, loved the medium of watercolor and acquired major examples by both modern American and European artists.

A selection of his collection will be the subject of the exhibition Modern Spontaneity¸ featuring 15 watercolors from late 19th-century masters such as Winslow Homer through modernists such as Charles Burchfield, Charles Demuth, and Fernand Léger.

This exhibition will reveal how watercolor both appeals to artists because of its apparent spontaneity and simultaneously frustrates them with its unforgiving nature. The exhibition is curated by Ellen E. Roberts, Harold and Anne Berkley Smith Curator of American Art.