Views of a Vanishing Frontier

Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the expedition of the German prince Maximilian of Wied and the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer to North America, the traveling exhibition “Views of a Vanishing Frontier” visually recreates the historic journey into the early-nineteenth-century wilderness. The show was organized by the Joslyn Art Museum, where The Inter-North Art Foundation, owner of the priceless Bodmer collection, has placed it on permanent loan. It depicts the epic journey chronologically, combining Bodmer’s magnificent watercolors, Maximilian’s written accounts of the expedition, and artifacts collected by Maximilian.

This catalogue offers a broad sampling from the show—thirty-four color and thirty-five black and white reproductions that will delight the most demanding connoisseurs. The pictorial record is complemented by selections from Maximilian’s writings. In addition, a long essay by John C. Ewers, Ethnologist Emeritus, Smithsonian Institution, examines the ethnological and historical significance of Bodmer’s pictures of Indians, which authorities have judged the finest, most faithful likenesses made before the introduction of photography.

The book includes a biography of Maximilian—the prototypical nineteenth-century scientist—by Joseph C. Porter, curator of western American history and ethnology at the Center for Western Studies, Joslyn Art Museum. In a third essay, David C. Hunt, curator of western American art, and Marsha V. Gallagher, curator of material culture at the Center for Western Studies, trace the expedition’s travels to the upper Missouri and review their extraordinary trip of 1832-34.

Published by the Center for Western Studies, Joslyn Art Museum and distributed by the University of Nebraska Press.