In late October, 1944, the Martha Graham Dance Company performed Appalachian Spring at the Library of Congress, establishing Graham as the master of modern dance. The significance of Appalachian Spring, however, went well beyond Graham's artistic development. Notwithstanding its traditional theme, Appalachian Spring heralded an important shift in American art. Following the Second World War a large segment of New York City artists abandoned the effort, so dominant in the interwar years, to create an explicitly “American” art in favor of a “modernist” aesthetic, best exemplified in abstract expressionist painting. Choreographed by Graham, composed by Aaron Copland, and designed by Isamu Noguchi, the “Ballet for Martha” marked an early expression of the shift from American realism to modernism. But unlike much of the radically nonrepresentational work of the late 1940s and early 1950s Appalachian Spring continued to embody the concerns of American realism, even unabashedly displaying its creators' continued embrace of the folk vernacular, while moving toward its modern aesthetic.