William Gropper’s political cartoons and paintings
The Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) in Rochester, NY presents William Gropper: Truth, Beauty, Justice, Humor. This exhibition will be on view in the Lockhart Gallery from July 25, 2025, through February 1, 2026.
Political cartoonist and painter William Gropper (1897–1977) spoke truth to power. While his satiric and piercing wit targeted powerful men in politics and finance, he advocated for the people, saving his admiration and respect for the American worker. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, his biting political cartoons appeared in widely circulated publications such as Vanity Fair and the New York Tribune, as well as in radical journals like New Masses.
Featuring paintings, drawings, and prints from MAG’s permanent collection, William Gropper: Truth, Beauty, Justice, Humor highlights what the artist’s critical eye and mind captured over four decades.
Early on, Gropper focused on depicting the foibles of politicians, but by the 1930s, he took aim at the United States Senate. In The Opposition (1942) a work featured in the exhibition, he satirizes legislators as they threaten to significantly cut federal funding for the arts.
After covering a national conference on unemployment for Vanity Fair, he declared: “I stayed two or three weeks and painted the Senate as I saw it. I think [it] is the best show in the world. If people saw it, they would know what their government is doing . . . I did one or two Senates, and now I will do [it] only when a Senator makes a speech that makes me mad.”
Another striking work is American Legion Convention. This drawing shows an outsized man in a uniform of the American Legion—a service organization for military veterans—maniacally laughing and nearly flattening a city block without a care for the humans inside the buildings. Gropper produced this work for Morgen Freiheit (Morning Freedom), a Yiddish newspaper based in New York.
Through bold images and sharp wit, William Gropper: Truth, Beauty, Justice, Humor invites visitors to explore Gropper’s unique use of art to confront realities.
About the Memorial Art Gallery
The Memorial Art Gallery showcases art from antiquity to the present day, including the outdoor public Centennial Sculpture Park. In addition to its permanent collection, MAG offers a year-round schedule of special exhibitions, lectures, concerts, tours, after-hours social events, and family activities.
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 11:00 am–5:00 pm, Thursdays & Second Fridays, 11:00 am–8:00 pm. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
Admission: $20; senior citizens, $18; college students with ID and children 6–18, $9. Always free to members, University of Rochester faculty, staff, students, and children five and under. Half-price general admission on Thursdays 5:00–8:00 pm is made possible by Monroe County. Discounted admission tickets are available when purchasing online. For more information, call 585.276.8900 or visit www.mag.rochester.edu.
