James Welling, artist. On April 23, 2017, at the National Gallery of Art, artist James Welling discusses his series Railroad Photographs, made from 1987 to 2000 in the context of his 19th-century predecessors. Fascinated with railroads since childhood, Welling has photographed train and railroad landscapes, radiating out from his home in New York City up through Connecticut, Massachusetts, upstate New York, to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and eventually Wyoming and California. This presentation is held in conjunction with East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography, the first exhibition to focus exclusively on photographs made in the eastern half of the United States during the 19th century. On view from March 12 through July 16, 2017, East of the Mississippi showcases some 175 works—from daguerreotypes and stereographs to albumen prints and cyanotypes—as well as several photographers whose efforts have often gone unheralded. This program is made possible by the James D. and Kathryn K. Steele Fund for Photography.