Highlights: Tourism and the American Landscape by Cooper-Hewitt National Design from Antiques & Fine Art magazine

In the nineteenth-century, romanticized views of Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and other scenic areas piqued national interest and contributed to a burgeoning tourist industry. As incomes grew and working people enjoyed more leisure time in the second half of the century, the market for prints, photographs, and other tourist souvenirs grew. Exploring the promotion of tourism in nineteenth-century America and the part Church, Homer, and Moran played in it, the exhibit presents more than 100 landscape paintings and sketches, along with such ephemera as hotel and railroad brochures, maps and tourist guidebooks. Notable works on view include Homer's Man with a Knapsack (1873), Moran's drawing of Toltec Gorge, Colorado (1881), and Church's oil sketch Schoodic Peninsula from Mount Desert at Sunrise (1850-1855). Also on view is a rare painted-tile fireplace surround created by Homer in 1878, one of only a few painted and glazed tile compositions Homer created during his brief foray into the decorative arts as a member of the Tile Club (1877-1887).