Ticket to Ride

Prior to the widespread availability of the automobile, artists experienced and explored the American West by train. At the same time, rail companies sought naturalistic images of Western subjects that could be displayed in ticket offices and hotels, in traveling exhibitions, and reproduced on advertising materials to promote Western travel on their lines. This exhibition features paintings, studies, posters, and graphics that emerged from the parallel relationships between artists and commercial designers with Western rail companies between the late 1880s and early 1930s, which were key decades in passenger travel.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.