The exhibit opened in Shelburne this summer as the first stop on its national tour and will run until Oct. 20.

By Busy Anderson

Shelburne Museum tells the American railroad story in a deep red room where over 40 paintings from around the country hang on the walls. 

Landscapes show artists’ first impressions of rail in the 19th century, with unimposing steam engines crawling through the distance. Rising cities and men laboring along tracks depict increased industrialization. Later pieces offer reflections on the railroad as a marvel that transformed from a machine to a vehicle for human interaction. 

“Short of the digital revolution in the last 20 years, I don’t think there’s been a moment of introduction of new technology in American history that rivals the railroad for what it did to the social topography, the cultural topography of the United States,” said Thomas Denenberg, the museum’s director.

The collection of paintings is part of “All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840-1955,” an exhibition that opened in Shelburne last month as the first stop on its national tour and will run until Oct. 20. The show is a collaboration between Shelburne and two other museums set to display the collection: the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha.

“It’s a little bit of a march through time,” said Julie Pierotti, curator at the Dixon.

The unveiling of “All Aboard” comes as Americans consider the sustainability of automobile culture — and how transportation infrastructure has reconfigured our landscape. Railroads defied physical and social distances in the 19th and 20th centuries, but similarly “they were a double-edged sword,” said Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, assistant curator at the Joslyn museum and a specialist in art from the American West. 

“It reflected both the best and the worst of its times: mobility yet segregation, speed yet environmental damage, economic growth yet inequality,” he said.

Shelburne is first to see the exhibition before it arrives at the Dixon and later at the Joslyn. The partnership allowed the museums to split costs and draw from 37 artwork lenders. The museums even published a book featuring essays on paintings from the exhibition by curators from each. That wouldn’t have normally been possible without collaborating, Denenberg said. 

Each of the host cities also carries a special history with its rail lines. “Amtrak and the freight trains go right through Shelburne and literally split the museum in half,” Denenberg said.​​ Tracks winding along Lake Champlain first connected Montreal to New York City in the 19th century, replacing waterway travel. “The reason the town of Shelburne exists is it was the whistle stop” between the cities, Denenberg said. 

The railroad also runs through the middle of Memphis, making it a part of everyday life in the Tennessee city, Pierotti said. The Union Pacific Railroad ties Memphis to Omaha, in Nebraska, and is central to Omaha’s commercial economy. 

“Omaha was chosen as the terminal of the First Transcontinental Railroad, which eventually connected the Great Plains to California when it was completed in 1869,” Busciglio-Ritter said. Union Pacific remains the most expansive railroad in North America, the company says, spanning 23 states.

“All Aboard” is the first exhibition on the East Coast to look at the relationship between the railroad and American art since the 1980s, Denenberg said. The time was right, the organizers said, as intense conversation about the risk and reward of new technology dominates the public sphere. 

“There’s something for everybody, and something for everybody to learn,” Pierotti said. 

“All Aboard” will open at the Dixon this November and at the Joslyn in February 2025.  

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, on assignment for the Vermont Community Newspaper Group.