Untouched by Chaos:
Karl Bodmer and the American Wilderness

Exhibition Dates: March 3, 2014 – March 8, 2015

Between 1833 and 1834, Maximilian, a German nobleman and self-trained naturalist, financed an expedition up the Missouri River, through a huge swath of the American West. Karl Bodmer, a young Swiss artist, accompanied Maximilian, creating some of the earliest images of the landscape, people, flora, and fauna of the trans-Mississippi West. The trip resulted in a massive, two volume publication, Travels into the Interior of North America, which featured more than 50 hand-colored engravings based on Bodmer’s original watercolors. This exhibition, drawn entirely from the Rockwell collection, will feature many of the most important engravings from these books.