Edouard Manet – The railway
Edward Hopper – Railroad Sunset
Art in the Age of Steam at Nelson Atkins Museum
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, from Sept. 13 through Jan. 18, 2009
Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway, 1830-1960 Celebrates the Speed, Power and Drama of the Railroad and Its Impact on Artists. Nelson-Atkins and Community Partners Offer Railroad-themed Programming
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September 11, 2008 – A major international exhibition opening this fall at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art will capture the excitement and range of emotions that steam-powered trains elicited as railroads reshaped culture around the world. The exhibition, Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway, 1830-1960, open from Sept. 13 through Jan. 18, 2009, will feature more than 100 paintings, prints, drawings and photographs drawn from 64 museums and private collections.
Art in the Age of Steam is the most wide-ranging exhibition ever assembled of American and European works of art responding to the drama of the railroad, from the earliest days when steam trains churned across the landscape through the romance of the Victorian era to the end of the steam era in the 1960s.
The exhibition opened first at Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, where it was on view from April 18 to Aug. 10. It drew more than 113,000 visitors and received excellent reviews in general and scholarly publications.
Extensive exhibition-related programming has been developed not only at the Nelson-Atkins, but also with eight Kansas City-area community partners.
―In light of Kansas City’s historic position as a railway town, this exhibition has strong local resonance. At the same time, it captures the international fascination with the steam train as both an inspiration for art and a life-changing experience for the world at large,” said Marc F. Wilson, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell Director/CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. “It is especially fitting that the exhibition arrives from Liverpool, another city with transportation at the core of its modern history”.
Among the works of art are modern and Impressionist masterpieces, including Edouard Manet’s The Railway, Claude Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare, Gustave Caillebotte’s On the Pont de l’Europe and Rene Magritte’s Time Transfixed. The exhibition features works that span a variety of styles, from an early lithograph by John Cooke Bourne, No. 1 Tunnel, to Edward Hopper’s modern Railroad Sunset, and Thomas Hart Benton’s The Wreck of the Ole 97. Photography, which also came of age during the rise of steam trains, is represented with works by Alfred Steiglitz, Charles Sheeler, André Kertész and O. Winston Link.
―The exhibition demonstrates how art and technology came together to contribute to the definition of modernity, exemplified by the speeding up of modern life in an increasingly mechanical society,‖ said Ian Kennedy, Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins, who co-curated the exhibition with Julian Treuherz, former Keeper of Art for National Museums Liverpool, England.
Britain was the cradle of the railroad and Liverpool was a major railroad terminal. The railroad was critical for the westward expansion of the young United States, and Kansas City’s Union Station was the nation’s second largest railroad station after Chicago.
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