As nations in the Americas gained independence in the early 19th century, a pictorial landscape tradition emerged. By 1840, landscape painting had become the primary medium for articulating conceptions of land and nation in the development of North and South American cultural identities. Picturing the Americas offers the first comprehensive treatment of this genre on both American continents, bringing into dialogue the landscape traditions of artists practicing between 1840 and 1940.

Featuring works by artists such as George Beaver, Fred Kabotie, Albert Bierstadt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frances Anne Hopkins, Lawren Harris, José María Velasco, and Tarsila do Amaral and essays by scholars such as Jolene Rickard, Ihor Holubizky, and Natalia Majluf, this exquisite volume offers perspective on the emergence of modernism, landscape art’s role in colonization, and how the development of landscape imagery reflects the geographies and sociopolitical histories of peoples, nations, regions, and diasporas.

As curator at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago from 2006 to 2021, Peter John (PJ) Brownlee oversaw a collection of over 700 paintings and works on paper, and organized a number of exhibitions in collaboration with museum partners such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, the musée du Louvre, the National Museum of Korea, the Shanghai Museum, and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. Along with co-organizing Picturing the Americas and other exhibitions, Brownlee edited and contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues. Brownlee is also the author of The Commerce of Vision: Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America and his articles have appeared in American Art and Journal of the Early Republic. In early 2023, Brownlee opened Art Sound Language, a record and bookstore in the Chevy Chase neighbourhood of Washington, DC. Featuring an eclectic selection of records and an array of books on art, music, and graphic design, Art Sound Language also hosts exhibitions and other events devoted to intersections of art, sound, and language.

Peter John Brownlee's profile page

Valéria Piccoli is the Ken and Linda Cutler Chair of the Arts of the Americas and curator of Latin American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Born and raised in Brazil, she studied architecture at the University of São Paulo and previously worked at the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. She has collaborated on numerous international research and exhibition projects, among them Terra Brasilis, part of the Europalia Brésil festival, and Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic.

Valéria Piccoli's profile page

Georgiana Uhlyarik is Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art, and co-lead of the Indigenous + Canadian Art Department at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She works collaboratively with artists and curators from across the Americas and Europe and teaches art at York University and the University of Toronto. Her publications include Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO, Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910–40, Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, Rita Letendre: Fire & Light, and Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry.

Georgiana Uhlyarik's profile page