Solo show
Karl Bodmer: North American Portraits
5 Apr 2021 — 25 Jul 2021 at Metropolitan Museum of Art
· New York City
This 2021 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the remarkable work of Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, whose journey through North America in 1832-34 produced some of the most precise and compelling visual records of Native American life ever made.
Traveling alongside the naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied, Bodmer documented the peoples, landscapes, and cultures of the American frontier with extraordinary skill and sensitivity. His portraits — rendered in watercolor with meticulous attention to dress, adornment, and individual character — remain invaluable both as works of art and as historical documents.
The exhibition invites visitors to consider Bodmer's images in their full complexity: as the product of a European artistic tradition, as records of a world on the cusp of dramatic change, and as enduring testaments to the dignity of the individuals he portrayed.
Traveling alongside the naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied, Bodmer documented the peoples, landscapes, and cultures of the American frontier with extraordinary skill and sensitivity. His portraits — rendered in watercolor with meticulous attention to dress, adornment, and individual character — remain invaluable both as works of art and as historical documents.
The exhibition invites visitors to consider Bodmer's images in their full complexity: as the product of a European artistic tradition, as records of a world on the cusp of dramatic change, and as enduring testaments to the dignity of the individuals he portrayed.
About the artist
Karl Bodmer
1809–1893 · Barbizon school
Johann Carl Bodmer was a Swiss-French printmaker, etcher, lithographer, zinc engraver, draughtsman, painter, illustrator, and hunter. Known as Karl Bodmer in literature and paintings, his name was recorded as Johann Karl Bodmer and Jean-Charles Bodmer, respectively. After 1843, likely as a result…
About the artist →About the venue
Metropolitan Museum of Art
· New York City
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5,727,258 visitors in fiscal year 2025, it was the most-visited museum in…
