The Best of the West is an exhibition of 45 printed rarities in early western Americana from the Clements Library collection. The exhibit is a tribute to antiquarian bookseller and outstanding Americanist William S. Reese (1955-2018), drawing upon Reese’s 2017 book The Best of the West for its descriptions of the titles on display. Learn more!

"America Transformed: Mapping the 19th Century," at the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library, explores the dramatic westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century and the complexity of factors that shaped the country over the century. Homesteads to Modern Cities, 1862-1900, the second part of this two-part exhibit begins in the early 1860s and concludes with the establishment of the modern American city, using Chicago as a case study. Click here to learn…

"Maine’s Lithographic Landscapes: Town & City Views, 1830-1870” at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art explores the history of Maine town and city views published during the first fifty years of statehood through major lithographs and several related paintings. Click here for more information!

This exhibit displays a collection of 46 recently acquired Winslow Homer wood engravings dating from 1858–1875, offering a rare glimpse of the prints as a collective body. Together, the prints trace developments in Homer’s compositional strategies and preferred subjects—domesticity, leisure, and manual labor, all set against idyllic New England landscapes—that continued even after he abandoned illustration in the late 1880s. Click here to learn more!

AHPCS members who attended the 2019 annual meeting will remember visiting Andrew Raftery's home studio in Providence. The Huntington Library is exhibiting a series of twelve plates by Raftery that chart the evolution of the garden he planted in Providence, Rhode Island, as it grew and changed over the course of a calendar year. The designs are based on Raftery's drawings and paintings, which were then engraved on a copper sheet and printed onto special decals that he laid on…

An exhibit about the diversity and abundance of wildlife in North America in the early 19th century as witnessed by artists and ornithologists, paired with their own prophetic warnings about wilderness loss during their time. Images of now-extinct birds illustrated by Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson, and John James Audubon will be on display in the John and Peggy Maximus Gallery of Antique Prints at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Click here to learn more!

Paul Revere (1734- 1818), the Revolutionary War patriot, was immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” with the famous opening lines:  “Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”  But Revere was famous for so much more than his midnight ride. A new ground-breaking exhibition by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere, features 200 objects that re-examine Revere’s life, transforming visitors’ understanding of the innovative businessman through an in-depth…

Drawing on the American Antiquarian Society's unparalleled collection of prints and books, the exhibition, Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere, will transform viewers' understanding of this iconic colonial patriot. This in-depth examination of Revere's many skills as a craftsman will help illustrate the entrepreneurial spirit of an early American artisan, who stood at the intersection of social, economic, and political life during the formation of the new nation. Examples of rare prints will be shown alongside elegant silver tea services and everyday objects,…