Modern West Images at Houston Museum

A stark black and white image of three country churches standing in a row on the plains of South Dakota is part of a new exhibit at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts called "The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950."

The show opened Oct. 29 and will be on display through Jan. 28. In March, it will move to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

This 1938 image of the churches, by famed photographer Dorothea Lange, is called "Freedom of Religion: Three Denominations (Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist Churches) on the Great Plains, Near Winner, South Dakota."

The museum says that the exhibit will show "the crucial role played by the Western landscape in defining American Modernism."

The photos and paintings will make the point that a modern art aesthetic sprang not only from cityscapes and the rise of industry, but also from the colors, geography, space, angles and light of classic Western landscapes.

Artists represented in the show include Frederic Remington, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Weston, Thomas Hart Benton, Ansel Adams, and Jackson Pollock.

You can see "The Modern West" at the Houston museum's Audrey Jones Beck Building, 5601 Main St. For more information, visit www.mfah.org.