AMWA After Hours – AMWA and the Art of the Railroad

Thursday, June 15, 2023 6:00 – 6:45 p.m. FREE

By the 1880s, thousands of people were traveling west on the transcontinental railroad to seek their fortune and experience a vast new world. The visual arts played an important role in promoting tourism from the Eastern U.S. to the rural lands out West. Railroad companies commissioned and collected art depicting distinctly Western subject matter to promote train tourism. Using Western landscape paintings, advertisements promised breathtaking views through a train window. Portraits of Native Americans and cowboys on horseback enticed people to use the train as a bridge from crowded industrialized cities to naturally beautiful places full of excitement and opportunity. Join AMWA staff for this FREE virtual program as we take a tour through the paintings in AMWA’s collection that were once owned by the Santa Fe Railway and the Great Northern Railroad. All aboard!

Register at AnschutzCollection.org and you will receive the Zoom link for the program through email in advance of the program.

Image credit: William R. Leigh, Grand Canyon, 1908