The works of Grandma Moses are the Bennington Museum’s greatest draw. From June through October, the museum will present its largest Moses exhibition in a decade, with an added context spanning the genre she helped make popular.

"While all of our shows draw interest, Grandma Moses is what people come here to see," curator of collections Jamie Franklin said. "We know who she was -- a little farm lady who became world-famous in the 1940s with her charming, naively executed paintings of rural American farm life. What we want to answer is: How did that happen?"

Franklin said the question will be addressed in commemoration of the 150th year of the birth of Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961). The exhibition, "Grandma Moses and the Primitive Tradition," will be installed in three of the museum’s 11 galleries. The show will be in addition to the museum’s permanent Grandma Moses exhibit house.

As the best-known primitive artist of the 20th century, Grandma Moses and her work are considered exceptional, outside the mainstream of American art history. This exhibition provides a framework in which to better understand Moses’ work and its reception, by examining the history of primitive painting in America.

"What we’ll do is give the public a chance to see Moses’ work next to that of the self-taught and amateur painters of the 19th century, as well as the modern primitives who came to fame around the same time she did," Franklin said.

As such, "Grandma Moses and the Primitive Tradition" will feature 55 works, 20 by Moses and 35 by other artists who worked in the primitive tradition. They will be drawn from the museum’s permanent Grandma Moses collection, and will be augmented by strategic loans from other institutions, such as the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., the Galerie St. Etienne in New York City and several private collections.