Western Art News
A new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum explores the ideas of naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., is presenting a new exhibition that focuses on an important six-week period in the life of naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who profoundly changed the way Americans talk and think about natural spaces. Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, which opens March 20 and continues through August 16, will feature artwork from some of the greatest American painters, including a number of important landscape artists.
“Alexander von Humboldt was arguably the most important naturalist of the 19th century. He lived for 90 years, published more than 36 books, traveled across three continents and wrote well over 25,000 letters to an international network of colleagues and admirers. In 1804, after traveling four years in South America and Mexico, Humboldt spent exactly six weeks in the United
States,” the museum states. “In these six weeks, Humboldt—through a series of lively exchanges of ideas about the arts, science, politics and exploration with influential figures such as President Thomas Jefferson and artist Charles Willson Peale—shaped American perceptions of nature and the way American cultural identity became grounded in our relationship with the environment.”
This exhibition will be the first to examine Humboldt’s impact on five spheres of American cultural development: the visual arts, sciences, literature, politics and exploration, between 1804 and 1903.
The exhibition includes more than 100 paintings, sculptures, maps and artifacts.
Artists represented in the show include Albert Bierstadt, Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Frederic Church, Eastman Johnson, Samuel F.B.
Morse, Charles Willson Peale, John
Rogers, William James Stillman and John Quincy Adams Ward.
According to the museum, “Humboldt’s quest to understand the universe—his concern for climate change, his taxonomic curiosity centered on New World species of flora and fauna, and his belief that the arts were as important as the sciences for conveying the resultant sense of wonder in the interlocking aspects of our planet—make this a project evocative of how art illuminates some of the issues central to our relationship with nature and our stewardship of this planet.”
For more information on the show, visit www.americanart.si.edu.