Connecticut artist Anna Held Audette (1938–2013) discerned loveliness in decline, creating monumental oil paintings of the disused factories, machines, and scrapyards that are America’s ruins. Her works, positioned somewhere between landscape, still life, and abstraction, reference the arc of America’s ascendance and decline as a manufacturing titan. Appreciative of art and architecture from across the ages, Audette perceived transcendent humanity and ingenuity vested in the crafted objects and spaces that caught her eye, defying expectations for women artists by embracing the inhospitable places recorded in her work.