(WASP) 'America Reflected'

 

"Master Bedroom'' (watercolor, 1965), by ANDREW WYETH, in the show "The Wyeths: America Reflected,'' at Heritage Museums & Gardens, in Sandwich, Mass., though Sept. 27.

We once had a big print of this painting,  over the bed in our master bedroom. Soothing indeed.

The Heritage Museums says {T}his exhibit will focus on quintessential American themes: the meaning of America, the significance of place and family and the role of storytelling in art.'' That there are three generations of Wyeth artists being exhibited give the family element  here industrial strength.

But there's nothing particularly quintessentially American about the second two themes, which apply in all societies.

For decades, the productive and superbly professional and skilled Wyeths have evoked the once mostly WASP world of affluent Northeast exurbs and suburbs and slightly decayed but still charming summer  houses on the New England coast or in the region's mountains. Midcoast Maine in the summer is a center for them.