Yosemite on the Walls

Art from the 1864 Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics’ Institute

A short Archives talk with slideshow

In the art galleries of the Mechanics’ Institute’s Fourth Industrial Exhibition, visitors in 1864 could see early views of Yosemite—mammoth photographs by member Carleton Watkins, a chromolithograph after Thomas Almond Ayres, and other works by artists including Enoch Wood Perry Jr. and C.L. Webb. That same year, Congress and President Lincoln set Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove aside for public use and recreation, the first time the federal government protected scenic land this way.

This brief Archives program is a chance to look at those images the way fairgoers did. Library manager and archivist Myles Cooper will share a short slideshow of the Yosemite pictures displayed at the fair, along with Watkins’s own photographs of the exhibition itself that same year. An accurate reproduction of one of Watkins’s mammoth photographs will be on display. He’ll talk about what the fair reports and related materials in the Archives reveal about western art and the Institute’s exhibitions, and show how anyone can start digging into those records.

Books on Yosemite, hiking, natural history, and nature photography will be available for checkout. Come see a slice of 19th-century art and photography that hung on the Institute’s walls, learn a bit about how the fairs worked, and find out what’s on the shelves today if you want to go deeper.