Frederic Church in Jamaica Opens at Cooper Hewitt
Cooper Hewitt opens more than 60 rarely seen sketches from Church's 1865 trip, made after the loss of his two children. On view Oct. 30 to Feb. 15, 2027.
On Friday, Oct. 30, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will open Frederic Church in Jamaica, an exhibition of more than 60 rarely seen sketches made by the American landscape painter on a trip to the island in 1865. The show runs through Monday, Feb. 15, 2027, and is part of global celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Church's birth.
A trip made in grief
Church is known for monumental, astonishingly detailed landscape paintings, and for travel in search of subjects. His April 1865 voyage to Jamaica with his wife, Isabel, was different, the museum says: it was a search for emotional and spiritual refuge after the recent deaths of their two young children from diphtheria.
For five months, according to the museum, Church trekked on foot and by horse, documenting the island's topography and plant life and capturing dramatic moments of light and weather. The sketches in the show were made during what the museum calls his "private anguish."
What is on view
The exhibition brings together more than 60 oil studies and graphite sketches, drawn from Cooper Hewitt's holdings of more than 2,000 Church works, which the museum says is the largest collection of his work in the world. The release names works including Palm Trees (June 1865), Tree Fern, Blue Mountains near Kingston (May 1865), Rainforest, A Lizard and several botanical sketches, most in oil and graphite on paperboard or graphite on paper.
Curator Caitlin Condell, head of Drawings, Prints and Graphic Design, said the show "offers a window into the creative process of one of America's most influential artists" through studies that have "rarely, if ever" been shown publicly. The graphite sketches, the museum adds, are often annotated with brief notes "both informative and poetic."
The wider context
The museum says the exhibition is framed not only by Church's biography but by "a society and environment under colonial rule." In 1865, it notes, Black Jamaicans lived in extreme poverty under British colonial rule. The show will surface the voices of Black Jamaicans, including Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, who addressed political tensions on the island.
Reproductions of period photographs, some collected by Church and some from the National Library of Jamaica, will be on view along with rare books from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. This contextual material is what turns a show of botanical studies into an argument about how landscape was seen and by whom.
Programs
On Thursday, Nov. 12, Victoria Johnson, author of the 2026 Church biography Glorious Country, will give an illustrated lecture placing Church in the global context of his time. The museum also plans a hands-on workshop with Alice Tangerini, the Smithsonian's botanical illustrator, focused on drawing native Jamaican flora. Dates for the workshop were not given in the release.
In 2027, Cooper Hewitt will launch an online platform with new high-resolution photography, illustrations, slideshows and scholarship on its Church drawings, which span his career and nearly all of his travels, from the Catskills to Mexico.
Credits and support
The exhibition is organized by Condell with collections assistant Mackenzie Jones. Exhibition and graphic design are by TSKP x IKD. The Henry Luce Foundation made the show possible, with additional support from the Robert Lehman Foundation, The Lunder Foundation, The Felicia Fund and the HRBT Foundation.
Why it belongs in a design museum
Cooper Hewitt is a design museum, and a drawing show there can look like an outlier. The museum's own framing answers the question: the sketches are working documents, records of observation and process, which is what design collections preserve. The press release stresses that the drawings "attest to the expressive and healing power of drawing from nature."
Visiting
The museum is at 2 East 91st Street on Manhattan's Museum Mile, in the landmarked Carnegie Mansion. The release does not give hours or ticket prices, and we did not verify them; check the museum's website.
What we could not confirm
We have not seen the exhibition, and the details here come from the museum's Oct. 5 press release. Admission, hours, the date of the drawing workshop and any critical response were not available. The cover image is a Church painting from 1866, Rainy Season in the Tropics, chosen to show his tropical work; it is not one of the Jamaica sketches in the show and the painting's setting is not claimed here.
FAQ
When does the exhibition open and close?
Oct. 30, 2026, through Feb. 15, 2027.
How many works are on view?
More than 60 sketches and oil studies.
Where is Cooper Hewitt?
2 East 91st Street, New York City.
Sources
*Cover photo: Mathew Benjamin Brady, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Edwin_Church_-_Brady-Handy.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Edwin_Church_-_Brady-Handy.jpg)* (Public domain).*