As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, the Academy Art Museum in Easton is taking a somewhat different approach to the question of American identity. Its current exhibition, Under the Mexican Sky: A Revolution in Modern Photography, looks south of the border to explore how Mexico helped shape some of the most important American photography of the 20th century.
The exhibition brings together 54 vintage prints made largely between the 1920s and 1941, when Mexico City became a magnet for artists seeking new ideas and greater freedom. Among them were Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, who arrived in Mexico in the 1920s and, in very different ways, began to develop the photographic voices that would define their careers. They worked alongside Mexican artists including Manuel Álvarez Bravo and within the larger cultural movement led by figures such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
For Weston, Mexico became the place where he began experimenting seriously with the still lifes that later made him famous. One of the exhibition’s highlights is his 1924 photograph Chayotes, an early work that points directly toward his later studies of shells, vegetables and natural forms. Modotti, initially Weston’s assistant and translator, developed her own approach, turning increasingly toward Mexico City’s modernization, its workers and its politics.
But the exhibition’s larger point goes beyond individual photographers’ careers. It suggests that American art and American identity have never developed within fixed national borders. Artists moved between countries, shared ideas and equipment, influenced one another and absorbed what they encountered. In this telling, Mexico was not simply somewhere American artists visited. It became part of the story of how American modernism developed.
In the Spy’s long-form conversation about the exhibition, Brian J. Lang, Director of Curatorial Affairs, explains why Under the Mexican Sky seemed particularly appropriate during America’s 250th anniversary, and why the artistic exchange between Mexico and the United States still has something to say about how Americans define themselves today.
This video is approximately 11 minutes in length.
Under the Mexican Sky: A Revolution in Modern Photography is on view through October 11, 2026, in the Lederer Gallery at the Academy Art Museum, 106 South Street in Easton. Admission is free. Museum hours are Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; closed Monday.
