Rufus Porter’s Curious World: Art and Invention in America, 1815-1860 Arctic Museum Foundation

Foundation

Anne Collins Goodyear is codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

one of the first secular publishing houses owned and operated by an African American in the United States

Robert Indiana

poetry from six decades of writing and from several continents

Rufus Porter’s Curious World: Art and Invention in America, 1815-1860 Arctic Museum FoundationEdited by Laura Fecych Sprague and Justin Wolff Once called the Yankee Da Vinci, Rufus Porter was an itinerant portrait painter and muralist, a publisher and author, an inventor of mechanical improvements, and an impresario who engineered an airship that promised to fly gold rush prospectors from New York to California in three days. Through his diverse interests in painting, mechanics, aeronautics, and publishing, Rufus Porter helped transform art