All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840 - 1955

Nov 5, 2024 -Jan 25, 2025

Dixon Gallery and Gardens
4339 Park Avenue
Memphis, TN 38117
United States

Nov 5, 2024 – Jan 25, 2025 at 10:00am to 5:00pm
Nov 5, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 6, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 7, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 8, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 9, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 12, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 13, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 14, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 15, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 16, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 19, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 20, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 21, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 22, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 23, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 26, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 27, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 28, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 29, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Nov 30, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 3, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 4, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 5, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 6, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 7, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 10, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 11, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 12, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 13, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 14, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 17, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 18, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 19, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 20, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 21, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 24, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 25, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 26, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 27, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 28, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Dec 31, 2024 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 1, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 2, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 3, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 7, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 8, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 9, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 10, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 11, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 14, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 15, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 16, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 17, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 18, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 21, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 22, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 23, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 24, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
Jan 25, 2025 at 10:00am – 5:00pm
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Price:

Free

The railroad transformed modern existence in nineteenth-century America (and around the world). There was simply nothing like the power of railroads for transporting people and products between growing metropolitan centers in the eastern United States and ever westward across the continent. By the 1850s, American railways had effectively stitched together a still relatively new nation in a manner its citizens could scarcely have imagined just thirty years earlier. Just as the digital revolution has in the present day, the railroad largely reinvented the American experiment in the nineteenth century.

The history of the railroads in the United States is also the history of many other things. The unfettered rise of this extraordinary technology ushered in a second Industrial Revolution, facilitated restless western expansionism, gave rise to the flawed ideology of Manifest Destiny, sparked the first spectacular wealth creation in America and the inequality that accompanied it, and contributed to the steady destruction of Indigenous ways of life. By the dawn of the Gilded Age, railroads had fundamentally transformed any number of related industries, from coal mining to steel production, and introduced innovations never before seen in banking, finance, modern warfare, farming and ranching, tourism, urban planning, and, unmistakably, if inadvertently, in the fine art of oil painting.

All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840–1955 examines the often-symbiotic relationship between painters in the United States and the passenger and freight trains that populated cities, towns, and countrysides across the nation. As seen through the eyes of some of our country’s most consequential artists, the exhibition traces the evolution of trains from the “devillish iron horse” of the mid-nineteenth century to an industrial powerhouse at the turn of the century, and ultimately by the mid-twentieth century, to a pageant of expressive metaphor and even quaint nostalgia. In following the railroad’s technological advances, the exhibition also tracks the progression of American painting, from the sublime canvases of the Hudson River School to hard-edged abstraction.

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday 1-5 p.m.; third Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

* Please check the website for holiday closures