Volume 20, Issue 3 | Autumn 2021

In this digital version of her research-based, multimedia art installation Impossible Garden, specially prepared for NCAW, artist Emma Steinkraus examines the contributions of women artist-naturalists to historical botanical and scientific art primarily produced during the long nineteenth century. A fully navigable, annotated digital garden created from reproductions of illustrations of flora, fauna, and fungi made by sixty-nine women artists across four continents is accompanied by an interview with the artist by Carey Gibbons. By situating the project within the realms of biography, feminist discourse, social history, colonialism, and environmentalism, Steinkraus encourages a rethinking of works by women artist-naturalists while exploring the nineteenth century as a source of inspiration for artists and scholars today.

This article chronicles the visual history of the American Agriculturist (1842–51; 1853–present; New York City), the first farming periodical in the United States to widely embrace artistic engravings. Long recognized as one of the most popular and influential periodicals in the mid-nineteenth-century United States, the Agriculturist’s efforts to cultivate rural artistic taste has largely escaped investigation. This article recounts the development of the farming journal’s interest in art—reproductions of paintings, original compositions, and other pictorial images—and explores its careful positioning as a mediator between the spheres of practical agriculture and fine art.