ROCHESTER.- The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester presents the exhibit My America: Art from The Jewish Museum Collection, 1900–1955 through December 24. What does it mean to be American? It's a question that many of us take for granted. But this was not the case for the artists of My America. Their paintings, photographs, sculptures and works on paper speak to the new freedom and individualism of artists as they reacted to their worlds--past and present, social and political, Jewish and secular--and as they claimed this country as their own. Their work brings us closer to their experience. And closer to each other.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, American Jewish artists found themselves in an exciting position: living outside the European ghettos of their ancestors and having gained certain civil liberties in the United States. Despite harsh economic and political realities, this freedom allowed them to forge new identities as artists and American citizens. The artists in this exhibition expressed their artistic and social freedoms in styles ranging from Social Realism to Modernism to Abstract Expressionism.

Among the artists included are Theresa Bernstein, Ilse Bing, Adolph Gottlieb, William Gropper, Jacques Lipchitz, Elie Nadelman, Larry Rivers, Ben Shahn, Aaron Siskind, Raphael Soyer, Alfred Stieglitz and Weegee.