Alexander Von Humboldt’s Influence on America | Smithsonian Institution

In the first half of the 19th century, few of the era’s great thinkers could match the pervasive influence of Alexander von Humboldt. The Prussian naturalist and explorer was everywhere at once: taking barometric readings on mountaintops, publishing bestselling books on natural philosophy, corresponding with heads of state.

Ralph Waldo Emerson described Humboldt as “one of those wonders of the world”—a scholar whose interests spanned astronomy, botany, chemistry, economics, geography, geology, physics, politics and zoology; a man who, even today, has more species named after him than any other human.

Acclaimed for his groundbreaking concept of the unity of nature—the idea that everything on the planet is interconnected in “one great whole”—Humboldt’s work had particular resonance in the United States, a then-young nation with expansive natural resources.

A major upcoming exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, explores Humboldt’s impact on America across five spheres of cultural development—the visual arts, sciences, literature, politics and exploration—between 1804 and 1903.

Humboldt’s pivotal six-week visit to America in 1804 serves as a starting point. Throughout his travels here, Humboldt helped Americans see their natural landmarks as emblems of the nation’s promise. He met with President Thomas Jefferson and leading American artists, writers and scientists, shaping their views of an emerging national identity linked to nature. At the same time, he developed a lifelong admiration for American ideas and landscapes.

“Humboldt envisioned the United States as an instruction manual for democracy, modeling its founding ideals for the rest of the world,” said Eleanor Jones Harvey, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and curator for the exhibition. “By seeing virtue in the country’s landscape and its people, he sped the nation along the path of deploying nature—and by extension landscape painting—as a core component of its cultural identity.”