Olana’s yearlong initiative to celebrate Church’s 200th birthday

HUDSON―In celebration of the 200th birthday of Frederic Church (1826–1900), America’s greatest landscape artist, The Olana Partnership will launch Frederic Church 200, a yearlong national initiative featuring exhibitions, publications, and programs that highlight Church’s creativity, audacity, spirit of adventure, and extraordinary global reach.

Frederic Church 200 will kick off with the 26th Annual Frederic Church Awards at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 22, followed by a public birthday celebration at Olana on May 2, bringing the community together to honor the legacy of one of America’s most visionary View of Olana, Peter Aaron/OTTO artists. The celebration continues on May 17 with the opening of a major new exhibition at Olana, Frederic Church: Global Artist.

Church’s vast, immersive paintings astonished audiences in his own time and helped place American art on the world stage. Inspired by scientific discovery and a desire to experience the world firsthand, he traveled widely, sketching volcanoes in South America, icebergs in the North Atlantic, ancient landscapes in the Middle East, and tropical atmospheres across the Caribbean and Mexico. Today, his works are in the collections of more than seventy museums and public institutions across the U.S. and Europe.

Frederic Church: Global Artist at Olana State Historic Site will be the flagship exhibition of the bicentennial bringing visitors into Church’s expansive view of the world. Curated by Tim Barringer, Elizabeth Kornhauser, and Jennifer Raab, the exhibition will feature works inspired by Church’s travels across the Americas, the Middle East, and the North Atlantic. It reveals how his encounters with diverse environments shaped a visual language that was at once American, scientific, and cosmopolitan.

However, Church’s imagination extended beyond his studio. At Olana, his 250-acre designed landscape overlooking the Hudson River, he created a one-of-a-kind environment, blending art, architecture, and nature which survives today as the most intact artist’s environment in the United States. Beyond Olana, he played a vital role in shaping cultural life as a founding trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a commissioner for Central Park, and an early advocate for preserving Niagara Falls.

“His art and public service reveal a deep engagement with the issues and ideals of his time. As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, Church stands out as a powerful model of American creativity, environmental awareness, and global connection,” said Sean Sawyer, the Washburn and Susan Oberwager president of The Olana Partnership.

“Frederic Church 200 allows us to honor not only his breathtaking artistic achievements, but also the expansive vision and civic spirit that continue to inspire audiences across the nation and around the world,” Sawyer added.

Church’s approach to landscape continues to inspire contemporary painters, photographers, filmmakers, and environmental artists. Olana’s fusion of architecture and landscape also informs today’s conversations about sustainable design, place-making, and the relationship between built and natural environments. His vision remains a touchstone for artists, environmental thinkers, public historians, and cultural institutions.

Exhibitions and Activations

Throughout the year, Frederic Church 200 will invite audiences nationwide to rediscover Church’s legacy through a wide range of exhibitions, programs, and publications at institutions around the world. More than seventy museums and public institutions that hold works by Church will participate in the bicentennial year. These events will highlight Church’s global perspective and reaffirm his place at the heart of American cultural history.

For a full schedule and ongoing updates, visit https://olana.org/fc200/.

Publications

Four new books will debut throughout 2026, offering fresh insights into Church’s life, travels, and artistic achievements, including the first holistic biography of his life by Victoria Johnson:

• Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through an American Landscape — Annik LaFarge (Fordham University Press), Publish date: March 3, 2026

• Frederic Church: Global Artist — edited by Tim Barringer, Elizabeth Kornhauser, and Jennifer Raab (Yale University Press), Publish date: April 28, 2026 Frederic Edwin Church, Cotopaxi, 1862. Oil on canvas, 48 × 85 in. (121.9 × 215.9 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts

• Glorious Country: How Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World — Victoria Johnson (Scribner), Publish date: May 5, 2025

• Olana: Frederic Church’s Vision of Architecture and Landscape — Barry Bergdoll, Sean E. Sawyer, and Thomas L. Woltz (Rizzoli), Publish date: September 2026.

About Frederic Church

Frederic Church (1826-1900) is the most famous American landscape artist of the mid-19th century. Church’s large-scale and immersive paintings of the natural world captivated a global audience, bringing him critical and financial success and international recognition for American art. Church stood apart from his contemporaries by looking beyond European models to seek inspiration in contemporary scientific and environmental thinking. Each painting was an adventure, taking him to South America to paint volcanoes and rain forests, to Labrador and Newfoundland to capture icebergs, and to the Middle East to depict the geology and landmarks of the ancient world.

Today, Church’s paintings can be seen in more than 70 public art museums across the United States and in Europe, and Olana, a New York State Historic Site and National Historic Landmark, stands as the greatest testament to his vision. Olana is the most important artist’s home, studio, and designed landscape in the United States. Church designed Olana as a holistic environment integrating his advanced ideas about art, architecture, landscape design, and environmental conservation.

Olana’s 250-acre artist-designed landscape with five miles of carriage roads and a Persian-inspired house at its summit embraces unrivaled panoramic views of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains and welcomes more than 170,000 visitors annually. The landscape is open for guided touring, and reservations are highly recommended. The landscape is open daily 8 a.m. to sunset.

Olana State Historic Site, administered and operated by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, is a designated National Historic Landmark and one of the most visited sites in the state.

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