RENO, NEVADA.-From granite cliffs and soaring waterfalls to verdant meadows and tourist dreams, Yosemite National Park has long been a site of visual drama. Explore the many layered histories and experiences that converge in Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, on view beginning this fall at the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA). The power of art—to shape the way we see, use and protect Western lands—is the focus of this exhibition. From romantic depictions of wilderness to images of the complex and often congested experience of the park today, this exhibition explores Yosemite’s changing visual identity and cultural role as a national destination. Yosemite spans three centuries and includes works by Albert Bierstadt, Ansel Adams, Edward Muybridge, Chiura Obata and Anne Brigman. Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, featuring over 140 paintings, photographs and Native American baskets, is presented in the Feature Gallery from October 13, 2007 to January 13, 2008.

Arranged in four chronological sections, the exhibition examines the ways in which artists have shaped the park’s visual identity over time and Yosemite’s ongoing relevance as a distinct, contemporary Western landscape now visited by more than three million people annually.

1855-1890: Nature’s Cathedral - Propelled by a spirit of discovery, America’s nineteenth-century search for cultural significance coalesced around Westward expansion. Urged by writers, critics and intellectuals to become directly involved with nature, artists such as Albert Bierstadt, William Keith, Thomas Hill and photographers Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge sought out the spectacular in Yosemite by portraying it as the epitome of pristine wilderness and evidence of America’s destiny. A selection of early baskets, mammoth-plate photographs and grand landscape paintings connect the presence of native people in Yosemite to its early artistic identity as an exotic and distinctly Western destination.

1890-1916: The People’s Playground - The results of the 1890 census led to the close of the American frontier, and that same year Yosemite achieved national park status, making its official transition from remote locale to national pastime. The art from the early tourist years of Yosemite explores the impact of tourism, from changing ideas regarding conservation to the introduction of Indian Field Days and the transformation of basket-making. The failed efforts of William Keith and John Muir to save the Hetch-Hetchy Valley from becoming a reservoir signaled the end of Yosemite as a scenic preserve and its future as an economically beneficent tourist mecca.

1917-1969: An Icon Comes of Age - America’s newfound love of the automobile doubled Yosemite’s visitation between 1915 and 1919. The mood of its patrons shifted from one of exclusivity to development that met the needs of the parks increased visitorship. Impressionists such as Maurice Braun and Colin Campbell Cooper to pictorialists Alvin Langdon Coburn, William Dassonville and Anne Brigman shaped a fresh identity for the park as an accessible place where stylish aesthetics coexisted with a human presence. Indian Field Days became a major event and transformed the baskets of Carrie Bethel into a recognized form of art. During this time Ansel Adams created the iconic photos that would eventually dominate the public imagination. Towards mid-century, the relationship between the park and its artists became a more intimate one, and Modernists begin to explore its abstract potential.

1970- present: Revisiting Yosemite - Since the seventies, Yosemite has faced overcrowding, uncertainty and unrest. Yosemite artists, focused on a landscape long removed from its frontier roots, deal with a place of contradictions where urban development often coexists with gorgeous scenery. Photographers Roger Minick, Ted Orland, John Divola, Richard Misrach and others look past the romantic legacy of Adams to new vistas and contrasts. Wayne Thiebaud and David Hockney are among the major American artists who perceive Yosemite as an extension of the modern experience. In the 1980s painting returns with vigor. The presence of diverse artistic approaches from Greg Kondos, Wolf Kahn, Jane Culp and Tony Foster end the exhibition with an optimistic look into the future of the park through the eyes of its artists past and present.

Local presentation of Yosemite: Art of an American Icon is generously sponsored by International Game Technology and the Satre Family Fund at the Community Foundation of Western Nevada, with additional support from the Nevada Arts Council, the City of Reno Arts and Culture Commission and Colliers International.

Yosemite: Art of an American Icon was organized by the Museum of the American West, Autry National Center, Los Angeles, California.

Edited by Amy Scott, Museum of the American West, Autry National Center curator of Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, the exhibition catalogue includes interpretive essays, 150 images and examinations of Yosemite’s enduring legacy. Published by University of California Press, the book is 220 pages in length and is available at The Store located in the NMA.