On his return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism"; he began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism. He toured America, making sketches and ink wash drawings of the things he saw. He would go back to these sketches again and again as reference for future paintings. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his "America Today" murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930–31. In 1984 the murals were purchased and restored by AXA Equitable to hang in the lobby of the AXA Equitable Tower at 1290 Sixth Avenue in New York City. In December 2012 AXA donated the murals to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met's exhibition "Thomas Hart Benton's 'America Today' Mural Rediscovered" ran until April 19, 2015. The murals were described as showing how Benton absorbed and used the influence of the Greek artist El Greco.