Some America's best-known, most beloved artists from the 18th through the 20th centuries will be exhibited at the Telfair Museum of Art through March 20.

The exhibition, "Strokes of Genius: Masterworks from the New Britain Museum of American Art," will be on view from Jan. 19-March 20 and features works by such artists as Norman Rockwell, Andrew Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Louise Nevelson, Jacob Lawrence, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Frederick Frieseke and Thomas Hart Benton.

"The exhibition represents the broad history of art in America from the 18th through the 20th centuries," added the museum's Curator of Fine Arts and Exhibitions, Holly Koons McCullough. "Ranging from mid-18th-century portraits by Joseph Badger to the postmodern conceptual work of Christo, the works in "Strokes of Genius" create a portrait of America itself."

The exhibition includes landscapes by Thomas Doughty, Asher Brown Durand and Sanford Gifford representing the dramatic Hudson River School tradition. American Naturalism is evidenced by the genre paintings of Winslow Homer and Henry Ossawa Tanner, and American Impressionism by a significant number of works from its leading practitioners, including Childe Hassam and Frederick Carl Frieseke. Both Hassam and Frieseke are represented in the permanent collection of the Telfair Museum of Art.

Early 20th-century works by Ashcan School artists such as Robert Henri and William Glackens, who rejected the gentility of American impressionism for the gritty, vital reality of urban America, are featured along with early modernist works by Maurice Prendergast and Charles Sheeler that signal an awareness of European avant-garde movements. Also featured are Regionalist works of the 1930s by John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, who infused their Middle American subject matter with a dash of the heroic. Social realism is represented by a powerful work from Jacob Lawrence, perhaps the most influential African American artist of the 20th century.

Works by Adolph Gottlieb and Louise Nevelson signify the triumph of the abstract expressionist movement, which would establish New York City as the new center of the art world. Postmodern pieces by well known "wrap artist" Christo and the brilliantly satirical Red Grooms are also included in this journey through American art history. Works by three of the greatest American illustrators, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell, round out the show.