Illustrated Lecture by Alexander Nemerov: “The Celestial Railroad”: Nathaniel Hawthorne and American Art

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Celestial Railroad,” published in 1843, offers a skeptical and satirical view of the era’s new means of transport. With a demon manning the engine, and a reassuring conductor named Mr. Smooth-It-Away describing the sights, the train sets out from the City of Destruction, across the Valley of Despond, on its way to the Celestial City. In this illustrated lecture given by one of America’s leading art historians, UVM graduate Alexander Nemerov, see how Hawthorne’s views match—and do not match—the visions of the railroad in the paintings of American artists of his era.

Alexander Nemerov is the author of many books on American art, most recently The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s, praised by the novelist Annie Proulx as “one of the richest books ever to come my way—deeply beautiful, achingly painful and astonishingly tender”; and Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, named by Vogue one of its best books of 2021 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography. Nemerov is a professor of art history at Stanford University. 

Lecture followed by audience Q&A. All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840-1955 will stay open until 7:30 p.m. so that attendees can explore the exhibition before or after the talk. Please note that the rest of the Museum will close at 5:00 pm.

Free to Members or with Museum admission.