AFA 20th Anniversary

20th Anniversary 140 www.afamag.com | www.incollect.com Rufus Porter’s Curious World Art and Invention in America, 1815–1860 by Laura F. Sprague R ufus Porter (1792–1884) was a remarkable polymath who pioneered initiatives in art, publishing, and science in antebellum America. His landscape murals, watercolor miniatures, books, newspapers, and other works have long been of interest to enthusiasts of American visual and material culture. Rufus Porter’s Curious World: Art and Invention in America, 1815–1860 , at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, unites significant examples of Porter’s oeuvre with works by two dozen other artists and creators, among them, engineer and steamboat inventor Robert Fulton (1765–1815) and painter and inventor Samuel Morse (1791–1872), placing Porter’s pursuits and interests into the larger cultural context of antebellum America and at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Featured in the exhibition are works from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and Bowdoin College Library’s Special Collections, as well as significant objects from more than twenty institutions and private lenders, many continues on page 147