Nature: Wilderness to Vacation Destination - 02/12/2012

Adirondack Museum Cabin Fever Sunday

Drawing on landscape painting, photography, traveler's accounts, and other sources, this presentation explores the evolution of American attitudes towards nature. Beginning with perceptions of the American landscape as a howling wilderness, a wasteland to be tamed and transformed, the lecture traces the social, cultural and economic forces that led to the perception of wild nature as something of value to be experienced and preserved. Key topics and figures along the way include the sublime, romanticism, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School, John Muir, Ansel Adams, and the Lorax. Presented by Charles Mitchell, Associate Professor, American Studies, Elmira College This Speakers in the Humanities event, which is free and open to the public, is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Part of our Cabin Fever Sunday Programming; this lecture takes place in the museum's auditorium at 1:30 p.m.