A captivating new exhibition at the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State considers how some of the most provocative midcentury artists made the leap from figuration to abstraction. A Way Through: Abstract Art of the 1940s features major works by Suzy Frelinghuysen, Arshile Gorky, Paul Keene, Lee Krasner, Alice Trumbull Mason, Henry McCarter, George L. K. Morris, Irene Rice Pereira, Judith Rothschild, Charles Green Shaw, Esphyr Slobodkina, Hedda Sterne and John von Wicht. Many of these .