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June 16, 2009
Ian Kennedy and Julian Treuherz The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam Exh. cat. Kansas City and Minneapolis: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Walker Art Gallery in association with Yale University Press, 2008. 288 pp.; 210 color ills.; 48 b/w ills. Cloth $65.00 (9780300138788)

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Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway, 1830-1960
Exhibition schedule: Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, Liverpool, April 18–August 10, 2008; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, September 13, 2008–January 18, 2009

 
CrossRef DOI: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2009.60

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The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam is a beautifully mapped journey. Visual metaphors for travel abound in the expansive design and double-page color layouts reproducing the spaces and social relations synonymous with the train: crowded stations, private compartments, tourist spectacles, conquest narratives. Interspersed throughout the book are eye-filling details that mirror the fragmented, mobilized gaze of the traveler. The text includes a generous selection of paintings, some well known, others not. But it...