Global Vistas: American Art and Internationalism in the Gilded Age explores the importance of international travel and exchange to American art of the late nineteenth century, a period of transition for the United States marked by the rise of global trade, international tourism, massive waves of immigration, and forces of orientalism and imperialism.

Through a selection of paintings, prints, photographs, and decorative arts from the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, as well as other collections at Washington University in St. Louis, this Teaching Gallery exhibition reveals how Americans increasingly defined their nation by looking to the foreign cultures and landscapes of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Caribbean basin. They imbued their art with a modern, multicultural spirit that also announced the country’s emerging status as a global power.

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The Teaching Gallery is a space in the Kemper Art Museum dedicated to presenting works from the Museum's collection with direct connections to Washington University courses. Teaching Gallery installations are intended to serve as parallel classrooms and can be used to supplement courses through object-based inquiry, research, and learning. Learn more