Terra Collection Initiative: Manifest Destiny/Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape

Co-organized by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Loyola Museum of Art in Chicago, Manifest Destiny/Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape traced the evolution of cultural attitudes toward nature and the environment as manifested in paintings, pastels, and prints made between 1790 and the mid-1960s. During this period, Americans’ views on nature changed significantly. Where colonial settlers saw seemingly endless nature and limitless bounty, nineteenth-century Americans explored outlying territories and expanded ways to harness and capitalize on nature’s abundance. Along with rapid industrialization and increased urbanization, the twentieth century also witnessed the birth of modern-day preservation and conservation movements and organizations. Over the course of the nation’s history, America’s embrace of its “manifest destiny” has been gradually displaced by a growing sense of its “manifest responsibility” to protect ecologically sensitive and endangered zones and to use the land and its resources in mindful and sustainable ways.

May 17–August 10, 2008
Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois, United States

Brownlee, Peter John.  Manifest Destiny/Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008.