"The Most Difficult Journey" tells several important stories. It traces the dispersion of visual modernism into the most distant reaches of the American West. It provides fresh insights into the workings of a significant New York gallery during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. And it reveals, as Andrea Pappas writes, that the 'so-called second generation [ of Abstract Expressionists], far from being derivative artists lacking in creativity, actually performed crucial and difficult work'. Montana-born New York commodity broker George Poindexter befriended Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and other rising stars of Abstract Expressionism and bought their works. His wife, Elinor, also became passionate about avant-garde American art, and in 1955, she opened the Poindexter Gallery on New York's West 56th Street. Together George and Elinor Poindexter assembled an enviable collection of American modernist paintings.Besides excellent examples by such luminaries as de Kooning, Pollock, Kline, and Richard Diebenkorn, the collection included works by many lesser known artists who nonetheless made significant contributions to modern painting in America. In the early 1960s, the Poindexters began donating a portion of their collection to the Montana Historical Society, in honor of George's pioneer forebears. Following George's death in 1974, Elinor created a second Poindexter Collection, donating another sizable group of paintings and prints to the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana. "The Most Difficult Journey" brings together 65 paintings from both collections. There is an essay by poet and cultural historian Rick Newby that traces the history of the Poindexter family, the Poindexter Gallery, and the creation of the Poindexter Collections. In this title, a ground-breaking assessment of the paintings by art historian Andrea Pappas is also included.
