Director, Glenn Lowry: In 1927, the artist Louis Lozowick wrote:
Louis Lozowick, read by actor: The dominant trend in America of today...is towards order and organization, which find their outward sign and symbol in the rigid geometry of the American city: in the verticals of its smoke stacks, in the parallels of its car tracks, the squares of its streets, the cubes of its factories, the arc of its bridges, the cylinders of its gas tanks.
Glenn Lowry: Lozowick’s words are echoed in the hard-edged forms you see in Crane.
Assistant Curator, Esther Adler: It’s very geometric. You get these really strong verticals and horizontals. I think from a contemporary viewpoint this kind of thing seems a bit scary. To me, this is a very ominous image. But that probably wasn’t Lozowick’s intention or his point of view at the time he was making the work. For him, technological advances and the machine were a great accomplishment of modern American society, really something to be celebrated as unique and important contributions. And this was a vantage point he shared with a lot of other artists and people in America at the time.