A little more than 100 years ago, in 1896, a group of prominent artists from the Midwest got together because they thought they were being ignored.

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The eastern art market was a world unto itself, said Rachel Perry, curator of fine arts at the Indiana State Museum. Perry said the Midwesterners — led byplein airpainter T.C. Steele — came from Indianapolis, St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago, and responded to their casual ostracism by forming the Society of Western Artists.

The group staged major exhibitions and survived as an organization for almost 20 years. It disbanded in 1914, but Perry has revived the sentiment that drew them together in the first place with a new book “T.C. Steele and the Society of Western Artists, 1896-1914” (Indiana University Press, $49.95) and a new exhibition, “Making it in the Midwest: Artists Who Chose to Stay.”

The book, the first major study of the group, focuses on Steele’s role as a catalyst for Midwest impressionism. But the exhibition is something else entirely.

“I was going to do an exhibit of paintings from those historical exhibits,” said Perry, “then we had the idea to have a contemporary gallery of Indiana artists who are making national names today or achieving their own measures of success while still living in the Midwest.”

The show includes roughly 50 works by artists who continue to ply their trade in Indiana.