The collection of 17 posters depicts the United States and its way of life. Its title is taken from the text of the Katherine Lee Bates 1893 patriotic song “America the Beautiful”.
The panels portray states and cities from East to West – from New York; fall in Massachusetts; cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C.; the Florida Everglades; the source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota; farmland from Washington to Indiana; Texas and its bluebonnets; Yellowstone National Park; the Grand Canyon in Arizona; and also the northern lights in Alaska. Americans are featured, too – from an African-American musician in Cajun country to Chicago residents celebrating St. Patrick’s Day; and from Chinese-Americans at the Autumn Moon Festival to an Apache father and son in Arizona.
The exhibition at the Jindrichuv Hradec Municipal Library will be displayed until the end of August.
The American landscape has sparked the imagination of settlers from the earliest days of this country. Often called “a virgin land,” the vast American continent, with its natural wilderness and a frontier line pushing constantly westward, held out the promise of possibility for generations of immigrants. The verses next to the photo of the Statue of Liberty are the opening words of the popular song “America the Beautiful,” written in 1893 by Katherine Lee Bates after she had ridden a wagon to the top of Pike’s Peak in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. They convey the connection between the country’s natural beauty and the soaring spirits the idea of America inspires. Today, the United States remains a country remarkable for the beauty and variety of its land and its bounty. From the Atlantic Ocean to the far western states bordered by the Pacific — and on to Alaska and Hawaii — there are sights for every imagination. Nature lovers enjoy a national park system that preserves tracts of wilderness. Those with an urban bent can sample the hills of San Francisco, the historic homes of Charleston, the architectural inventiveness of Chicago, or the warm welcome found on the front porches of small towns throughout Middle America. This poster show offers an introduction to the vistas found — in Bates’s words — “from sea to shining sea.”
