Skip to Main Content
Home>Exhibitions>Past>1989>Frederic Edwin Church

Frederic Edwin Church

October 15, 1989 – March 18, 1990
East Building, Upper Level, Northeast, North Bridge, and Mezzanine, Northeast

Frederic Edwin Church, El Rio de Luz (The River of Light), 1877, oil on canvas, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1965.14.1

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: 49 paintings by Frederic Edwin Church were shown, including large-scale works from the late 1850s and the 1860s. These paintings had never been seen together, even during the artist's lifetime.

Organization: Franklin Kelly, curator of collections at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and previously curator of American art at the National Gallery, was exhibition curator with the help of Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., curator of American painting and deputy senior curator of paintings at the National Gallery. Gaillard Ravenel and Mark Leithauser designed the exhibition, and Gordon Anson designed the lighting.

Attendance: 297,329

Catalog: Frederic Edwin Church, by Franklin Kelly with Stephen Jay Gould, James Anthony Ryan, and Debora Rindge. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989.

Church, Frederic Edwin
American, 1826 - 1900

Download a free PDF of the exhibition catalog (PDF 57.63MB)