KANSAS CITY, MO.- During the turbulent 1940s, artist George Ault (1891-1948) created eerie and evocative paintings that are some of the most original made during those years. To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., will be on view at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art through Jan. 8, 2012. The first major exhibition of Ault’s art in more than 20 years, To Make a World recreates a moment in America when the country was rendered fragile by the Great Depression and made anxious by global conflict. Although much has been written about the glorious triumph of the World War II, what has dimmed over time are memories of the tenor of life on the home front, when the country was distant from battlefields yet profoundly at risk. The art Ault created while living in relative isolation in rural upstate New York became a personal world of clarity and composure that offset a real world he felt was in crisis. “Geor