Part of a series of occasional features marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The U.S. boasts a diverse array of stunning natural landscapes, from the dense Louisiana bayous to the peaks of the Rockies.
“Nature is our commonwealth — our common wealth,” said Horace D. Ballard, Theodore E. Stebbens Jr. Curator of American Art at the Harvard Art Museums.
Early European colonists in the Americas, Ballard explained, sent friends and colleagues plants, seeds, and the bones of mastodons, as evidence of the marvelous landscapes that produced them. Later, in the 1850s and ’60s, Americans with little ability to travel would pay to crowd into tight rooms for a chance to view a single painting of Niagara Falls.
“When it comes to the United States, with all of its thousands of microclimates and ecosystems, it’s dizzying,” Ballard said. “One of the most profound and simple — but not naive — pronouncements we can make and hold onto on the country’s 250th anniversary is this incredible, dizzying diversity we’re all so proud of, and we all benefit from, socially and environmentally. E pluribus unum — out of many, one — defines the way the world has always seen the U.S.”
