Liz GlynnAmerican Progress (after John Gast)

Liz Glynn’s 2017 copper sculpture of the empty dress of the striding figure in John Gast’s painting American Progress, shown in the gallery’s vitrine.

Thin, highly reflective copper sheeting takes the shape of the dress worn by the giant woman in Gast’s 1872 painting, an allegory of manifest destiny who strides west as bison and Indigenous people on horseback flee. The copper recalls both industrialization and the Statue of Liberty. Part of Glynn’s series The Shape of Progress, the work was first shown at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017–18.

Full details at paulacoopergallery.com