From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 20, 1975:

World-renowned painter Thomas Hart Benton passed away this week in Kansas City, three months shy of his 86th birthday. The artist had just completed a mural commissioned by the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee. Benton had combined his birthright of rural Missouri and the early influences of urban centers to develop, along with John Stuart Curry and Grant Wood, a school of art which came to be known as Regionalism. His fiery individualism and strong ties to Missouri had strengthened Benton’s friendship with former President Harry S Truman, who considered Benton “the best damned painter in America.”