Zoom program: Curating All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art

Julie Novarese Pierotti will share her insights as curator of the exhibition All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840-1955, which explores the depictions of trains and train infrastructure in American painting during the 19th and 20th centuries. Join us for her Zoom presentation on Tuesday, November 18, at 7:00 pm Central Time.

From its emergence as a technological marvel in mid-19th century landscape views to its adoption by artists as a symbol of modern life and industry, the railroad was a significant motif in several major art movements.

Organized by the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Joslyn Art Museum and Shelburne Museum, this exhibition features paintings from the Hudson River School to postwar abstraction. Audience members will be amazed by works that depict rail workers and passengers presenting trains as spaces for distinct forms of social interactions and as the engine of modernity. Other works examine the impacts of trains on population displacement, labor struggles, and environmental destruction. All of these impacts changed the fabric of American life.

Join us online for On the Right Track–Curating All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840-1955. RSVP today to be inspired by the often-symbiotic relationship between painters in the United States and the passenger and freight trains that became part of the American landscape.

This program was recorded and is available to view at the @railphotoart YouTube page.

This program originally aired on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, at 7:00 pm Central Time
(8pm Eastern, 6pm Mountain, and 5pm Pacific)

About Julie Pierotti
Julie Novarese Pierotti is the Martha R. Robinson Curator at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee. A native of Memphis, she graduated from the University of Mississippi with a bachelor’s degree in Art History and went on to receive an MA in the History of Art from Vanderbilt University. Since joining the staff of the Dixon in 2007, she has helped organize a number of exhibitions for the museum, including Regional Dialect: American Scene Paintings from the John and Susan Horseman Collection (2009), and its follow-up, Modern Dialect: American Paintings from the John and Susan Horseman Collection (2012), in addition to Anything but Clear: the Studio Glass Movement, 1979-2009 (2010); The Impressionist Revolution: Forty Years of French Art at the Dixon (2016); The Real Beauty: The Artistic World of Eugenia Errázuriz (2018); Memphis 2021; Memphis 2024; All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art (2024); and Chris Antemann: An Occasional Craving (2025).

Julie also manages the Dixon’s Mallory/Wurtzburger series, which has been highlighting contemporary art in the Memphis area since 2008. In 2021, she published Dixon Gallery and Gardens: Paintings, Sculpture, Works on Paper, an updated catalogue of more than one hundred works of art in the Dixon’s collection. Her forthcoming projects include the 2026 exhibition and publication Café Society: Art and Sociability in Paris, 1855 – 1914.