Rufus Porter’s Curious World: Art and Invention in America, 1815-1860 Arctic Museum and a secular Christian among

and a secular Christian among clergy

Anne Collins Goodyear is codirector of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Robert Indiana

James Siena

drawing on fifteen collections

Rufus Porter’s Curious World: Art and Invention in America, 1815-1860 Arctic Museum and a secular Christian amongEdited by Laura Fecych Sprague and Justin Wolff Once called the Yankee Da Vinci, Rufus Porter was an itinerant portrait painter and muralist, a publisher and author, an inventor of mechanical improvements, and an impresario who engineered an airship that promised to fly gold rush prospectors from New York to California in three days. Through his diverse interests in painting, mechanics, aeronautics, and publishing, Rufus Porter helped transform art