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West Bend Exhibition

The American Landscape

Beyond the Horizon

May 2–July 19

MOWA | West Bend

About the Exhibition

Reveals how artists have used the Wisconsin landscape to reflect on American identity

 

Opening Party

May 2 | 2:00–4:00

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, The American Landscape: Beyond the Horizon offers a timely reconsideration of the place we call home. Drawing from MOWA’s permanent collection and supplemented by strategic outside loans, the exhibition explores how artists have interpreted Wisconsin’s landscape across two centuries. Together, these works reflect the richness, complexity, and contradictions that shape both regional identity and the broader American experience.

From Native voices and immigrant stories to contemporary reflections on place, this exhibition presents expansive views of life in Wisconsin. Agrarian traditions that helped feed a growing nation appear alongside histories of extraction, industry, and urbanization. Historic and contemporary works are placed in dialogue to illuminate shifting perspectives. Nineteenth-century paintings by Henry Vianden evoke a Romantic vision of nature—fading light and the solitary tree recall the traditions of Old World European landscape painting. In contrast, Brandon Bauer’s recent video work reflects on the atomic origins of the Anthropocene, suggesting the uncertain beginning of a new epoch shaped by human impact.

Through painting, photography, and sculpture, The American Landscape: Beyond the Horizon reveals how artists have used the Wisconsin landscape to reflect on American identity—meeting the complexity of our current moment in time.

The exhibition is guest-curated by Rafael Francisco Salas, a contemporary landscape painter and professor at Ripon College, whose work grapples with the liminal spaces between memory and the imagined.

Heinrich (Henry) Vianden, The Oak Tree, 1880 (left)

Artist List

Tom Antell
Tom Bamberger
Brandon Bauer
Emily Belknap
Siara Berry
Lois Bielefeld
Lila Greengrass Blackdeer
Mark Brautigam
John Stuart Curry
Joseph Friebert
Owen Gromme
Issac Harris
Asher Imtiaz
Lois Ireland
Tom Jones
Wilhelm Knapp
Helen Lonetree
Richard Lorenz
Truman Lowe
Walter Marsden
Shane McAdams
David Niec
Georgia O’Keeffe
Christian Olson
Robert von Neumann
Jason Reblando
Theodore Robinson
Suzanne Rose
Rafael Francisco Salas
Charles van Schaick
Bernhard Schneider
Wilhelm Schroeter
Paul Seifert
Trina May Smith
Adam Stoner
Howard Thomas
Charles Thwaite
Jason Vaughn
Henry Vianden
M. Winston
Santos Zingale

 

Georgia O’Keeffe, Birch and Pine Tree, No. 2, 1925

Siara Berry, Red Flags, 2023

 

Truman Lowe, Thunder, 2010

Charles Thwaite, Study for Chilton Post Office Mural, 1940

John Stuart Curry, Rainbow and View of Madison, 1937

Rafael Francisco Salas, Parade (Dusk), 2025

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