Eadweard Muybridge At Smithsonian American Art Museum

Exhibition "Eadweard Muybridge: The Central American Journey", Feb. 2, 2007 - April 29, 2007 at Smithsonian American Art Museum, Eighth and F streets N.W. Graphic Arts galleries, second floor.

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), a preeminent landscape photographer who is best known for his
stop-action photographs of humans and animals in motion, produced an album of photographs taken in
Central America.

"Eadweard Muybridge: The Central American Journey" focuses on these photographs,
which represent an important aspect of the artist's career that is receiving the attention they deserve for
the first time. The exhibition highlights selections from this body of work, acquired by the Smithsonian
American Art Museum during the past decade.

In 1875, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company engaged Muybridge to promote Central America as a
destination for tourists and investors. He photographed the dramatic volcanic highlands of Guatemala, as
well as the Spanish Colonial architecture there and in Panama. He also captured Guatemala's emerging
coffee industry, which was rapidly transforming the social and natural landscape as the region began to
shift toward an economy based on modern, industrial commerce.

The 60 photographs in the exhibition
are drawn from an edition of the album "The Pacific Coast of Central America and Mexico; The Isthmus
of Panama; Guatemala; and the Cultivation and Shipment of Coffee" that Muybridge assembled upon
his return to California in 1876.

By www.americanart.si.edu