Frederic Church: Global Artist

 

May 17 – October 25, 2026

Olana State Historic Site: 5720 NY-9G, Hudson, NY 12534

 

 

Frederic Church: Global Artist Opens May 17 at Olana State Historic Site

 

As a cornerstone of the Frederic Church 200 celebration, the new exhibition explores how global travel shaped the vision of America’s preeminent landscape artist.

 

HUDSON, NY – The Olana Partnership announced today the opening of Frederic Church: Global Artist on Sunday, May 17 at Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, New York. The exhibition commemorates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Church (1826–1900).

 

“We are thrilled to present a landmark exhibition that Ʊrmly places Frederic Church as an artist who sought to bring the beauty and scientiƱc wonder of the world to the United States,” said Sean Sawyer, Washburn and Susan Oberwager President of The Olana Partnership. 

 

 

Frederic Edwin Church, Cayambe, 1858. Oil on canvas, 30 × 48 1/8 in. (76.2 × 122.2 cm). The Robert L. Stuart Collection, the gift of his widow Mrs. Mary Stuart. 

 

The New York Historical Church was celebrated as a preeminent American landscape artist whose life and work was indelibly shaped by global travel that eƯectively brought the world to America. Early trips took him to South America, across the northeastern United States, to Jamaica, and to the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Later he visited Europe and the Middle East, and in his Ʊnal decades he made 15 winter sojourns in Mexico. Olana, the designed landscape and home overlooking the Hudson River that he built with his wife Isabel, reƲects his global travel and collections. 

 

Elizabeth Kornhauser, Consulting Senior Curator and Chair of The Church 200 Committee, The Olana Partnership shared, “Frederic Church: Global Artist, brings together a number of Church’s finest monumental oil paintings, and exquisite drawings and oil sketches that are indelibly shaped by his life of global travel. Widely exhibited in the United States and Europe during his lifetime, the artist’s paintings won a new level of respect for American art both in the United States and abroad. Church’s global ambition embodying the central scientific and political dilemmas of his lifetime is explored in the exhibition and accompanying book, providing fresh new insights that redefine this artist for contemporary audiences.” 

 

Frederic Church: Global Artist examines the artist in his own time and demonstrates his continuing relevance for today’s audiences. Widely exhibited in the United States and Europe during his lifetime, the artist’s paintings won a new level of respect for American art.

 

Frederic Church: Global Artist will unite the broad range of media he mastered, including drawings and oil sketches from Church’s travels with examples of his large, extravagantly detailed paintings produced for public exhibition. Works from the artist’s exceptional collection of photographs will be shown. In addition to rarely seen works from the Olana collection, the exhibition will feature consummate loans from a number of major public and private collections, including the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, The New York Historical, and The Terra Foundation for American Art. 

 

 

Attributed to Felix Bonfils, Frederic Edwin Church and His Son, Frederic Joseph, on a camel in Beirut, 1868. Carte-de-visite photograph on paper, 4 7/8 x 3 3/8 in. (12.4 x 8.6 cm). 

 

New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art, Yale University, added, “The exhibition Frederic Church: Global Artist reveals the extent of Frederic Church's artistic ambition as a global traveler in the age of empires. It explores his fascination with the natural world, with the hemispheric cultures and histories of the Americas, the Caribbean and the Middle East, and presents Olana as the outcome of his world-wide entanglements.

 

The accompanying book presents lively and original essays by a group of scholars reassessing Church's contribution beyond the local and national, as an artist of global significance.” 

 

The exhibition is organized by Elizabeth Kornhauser, Curator Emerita, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Senior Consulting Curator for The Olana Partnership, Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University and Jennifer Raab, Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. 

 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a groundbreaking new publication from Yale University Press in association with The Olana Partnership, also titled Frederic Church: Global Artist, co-edited by Tim Barringer, Elizabeth Kornhauser, and Jennifer Raab. This lavishly illustrated volume features original essays by scholars from across the humanities that reveal Church as an artist whose works engage with questions of industrialization and environmental destruction, the rise and fall of empires, the construction of national identity, and the cataclysmic eƯects of slavery and civil war.

 

 

Frederic Edwin Church, The Iceberg, c. 1875. Oil on canvas, 22 x 27 in. (55.9 x 68.6 cm). Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. 

 

Frederic Church 200

Frederic Church: Global Artist is organized in coordination with Frederic Church 200, an initiative led by The Olana Partnership in 2026 to mark the 200th anniversary of the artist’s birth in 1826. Frederic Church 200 will celebrate and extend Church’s legacy through exhibitions and programs at museums across the United States and internationally. A number of public programs and special exhibition tours have been organized to

complement the exhibition. Please visit https://olana.org/fc200/ for updates and more information.

 

Exhibition Credits

Frederic Church: Global Artist is curated by Elizabeth Kornhauser, Curator Emerita, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Senior Curator and Chair, The Frederic Church Bicentennial Committee, The Olana Partnership; Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art, Yale University; and Jennifer Raab, Professor in the History of Art, Yale University. 

 

The exhibition will be presented in the Sharp Family Gallery at Olana State Historic Site from May 17-October 25, 2026. 

 

About Frederic Church

Frederic Church (1826-1900), is the most famous American landscape artist of the mid19th century. Church’s large-scale and immersive paintings of the natural world captivated a global audience, bringing him critical and Ʊnancial success and international recognition for American art. Church stood apart from his contemporaries by looking beyond European models to seek inspiration in contemporary scientiƱc and environmental thinking. Each painting was an adventure, taking him to South America to paint volcanoes and rain forests, to Labrador and Newfoundland to capture icebergs, and to the Middle East to depict the geology and landmarks of the ancient world. 

 

Today, Church’s paintings can be seen in more than 70 public art museums across the United States and in Europe, and Olana, a New York State Historic Site and National Historic Landmark, stands as the greatest testament to his vision. Olana is the most important artist’s home, studio, and designed landscape in the United States. Church designed Olana as a holistic environment integrating his advanced ideas about art,

architecture, landscape design, and environmental conservation. Olana’s 250-acre artistdesigned landscape with Ʊve miles of carriage roads and a Persian-inspired house at its summit embraces unrivaled panoramic views of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains and welcomes more than 170,000 visitors annually. The landscape is open for guided touring, and reservations are highly recommended. The landscape is open daily 8 AM sunset.

 

Olana State Historic Site, administered and operated by the New York State OƯice of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, is a designated National Historic Landmark and one of the most visited sites in the state.

https://olana.org

 

*허드슨강 학파(Hudson River School) 풍경화는 왜 중요한가? Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School 

*토마스 콜의 여정: 대서양 횡단@메트로폴리탄뮤지엄, 2018

*뉴욕역사협회 소장 허드슨강 학파 '자연의 시정'@알렌타운미술관(PA), 2017

*미 풍경화의 아버지 조지 이네스@몽클레어미술관, NJ