Art as Documentation

Before the internet, before cameras, artists were often the documenters of new lands. One of our past curators called Karl Bodmer, “Prince Maximilian’s point-and-shoot artist.” Bodmer was included in Maximilian’s explorations in North American to record images of people, cities, and rivers along the way.

Art is often used to document experience. MHS holds folios of Catlin and Audubon; lithographs by Bodmer; a small journal sketchbook of Granville Stuart’s; and many others—drawings illustrating journals, diaries, and letters; even Native American pictographs, petroglyphs, tipi liners, ledger art, winter counts and so on. We as humans document—big events, mundane things, strange and unusual things, plants, wild animals, family, pets, historic figures—the list goes on including whatever captures the artist’s eye or commissions tapping his or her skill. Even I fall into the habit in fits and starts.

Pachtüwa-chtä. An Arrikkara Warrior, by Karl Bodmer,
aquatint with engraving, ca. 1850, MHS X1970.27.48