A visitor stands before Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara (1857) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. When the painting debuted, audiences were stunned by its scale and sense of immediacy. Long before large-format photography, cinema, or digital media, Church created an experience that seemed to place viewers at the edge of the falls themselves. The exhibition traces how artists have interpreted Niagara over the last two centuries, from romantic spectacle to cultural symbol.
