The Art Institute of Chicago Presents Timothy H. O'Sullivan Vintage Photographs

Written by Michael Weston Thursday, 06 October 2011 01:00

Chicago, IL.- The King Survey of the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains, from 1867 to 1872, was the model for the other “great surveys” of the American West. Rare and iconic works by Timothy H. O’Sullivan, the King Survey’s official photographer, will be featured in "Timothy O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photography" an exhibition opening at the Art Institute of Chicago on October 22nd, and remaining on view through January 15th 2012. There are 60 photographs in the exhibition, nine of which were borrowed from the American Geographical Society in Milwaukee, WI, all the rest are from the holdings of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.  Keith F. Davis and Jane A. Aspinwall, respectively senior and assistant curators of photography at The Nelson-Atkins, organized the exhibition and co-authored a major book that will accompany the exhibition.

Timothy O’Sullivan (1840–1882) was one of the most important American photographers of the nineteenth century. While employed by Mathew B. Brady and Alexander Gardner, O’Sullivan made iconic images of the American Civil War. After the war, O’Sullivan served as the official photographer for three U.S. government survey expeditions: the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (or “King Survey”) of 1867–69 and 1872; the Darien (Isthmus of Panama) Expedition of 1870; and the Geological Surveys West of the 100th Meridian (or “Wheeler Survey”) of 1871 and 1873–74. His images of the West are of great historical and artistic significance: working alongside geologists, naturalists, and surveyors, O’Sullivan produced some of the earliest and most influential photographs of the American frontier. O’Sullivan’s work in the King Survey (which covered an 800-mile-long swath of land, roughly straddling the path of the transcontinental rail route, from southern Wyoming to the California line) is of particular importance to his career and to the history of American photography.

His photographs of barren landscapes, notable or curious geological formations, and mining operations represent a raw, powerful vision of this little-understood territory increasingly occupied by white Americans. In addition, these images have remained challenging touchstones in photographic history—a perfect, if enigmatic, union of documentary and artistic intentions, fact and interpretation. While a few of these images have been widely reproduced, original prints are remarkably rare. Timothy O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs includes photographs contextualized with contemporaneous survey reports and topographical and geological atlases that show visual depictions of the land across media.


The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) was originally founded as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in1879 to be both a museum and school. It moved to its present site at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street in 1893. In 2006, the Art Institute began construction of "The Modern Wing", an addition situated on the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe. The project, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, was completed and officially opened to the public on May 16, 2009. The 264,000-square-foot (24,500 m2) building makes the Art Institute the second largest art museum in the United States with over a million square feet total. The collection of the Art Institute of Chicago encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world and contains more than 260,000 works of art.

Today, the museum is most famous for its collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and American paintings. Considered one of the finest in the world, the collection of European painting contains more than 3,500 works dating from the 12th through the mid-20th century. Holdings include a rare group of 15th-century Spanish, Italian and Northern European paintings, highlights of European sculpture, and an important selection of 17th- and 18th-century paintings. Major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works and classic Modern works are among its most significant holdings. Included in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection are more than 30 paintings by Claude Monet including six of his Haystacks and a number of Water Lilies. Also in the collection are important works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir such as “Two Sisters (On the Terrace)” and Henri Matisse's “The Bathers”, Paul Cézanne's “The Basket of Apples”, and “Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair”. “At the Moulin Rouge” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is another highlight, as are Georges Seurat's “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” and Gustave Caillebotte's “Paris Street; Rainy Day”. Non-French paintings of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection include Vincent Van Gogh's “Bedroom in Arles” and “Self-portrait, 1887”.

The Department of American Art includes more than 1,500 paintings and sculptures from the 18th century to 1950 and nearly 2,500 decorative art objects from the 17th century to the present. Strengths in the collection include the Alfred Stieglitz Collection and significant groups of work by John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt and Winslow Homer. Modernist holdings include iconic images by Grant Wood, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper and the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Among the most important works are Grant Wood's “American Gothic”, Edward Hopper's “Nighthawks” and Mary Cassatt's “The Child's Bath”. The foundation’s collection of American works on paper are housed in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.artic.edu/aic/

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