The Detroit Institute of Arts announced on March 31 that it will host “Guests of Honor: Frederic Church’s Cotopaxi,” a special exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of American landscape painter Frederic Church’s birth. The exhibition, which runs from March 27 through October 25, 2026, will feature the museum’s own painting Cotopaxi (1862), along with three works by Church on loan and a related landscape by Rémy Louis Mignot.
The event highlights Church’s approach to combining observation and imagination, transforming scientific curiosity into dramatic art. It is part of a broader series marking his bicentennial, with exhibitions and events taking place across the United States and Europe.
“This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see Frederic Church’s monumental Cotopaxi in dialogue with the studies that preceded it, revealing the artist’s remarkable dedication to capturing nature’s sublime power,” said Detroit Institute of Arts Director Salvador Salort-Pons. “As we mark the 200th anniversary of Church’s birth, we celebrate his enduring contribution to American art and his ability to inspire wonder in viewers across generations.”
Church was influenced by contemporary scientific discoveries in earth sciences and traveled twice to Ecuador—first in 1853 and again in 1857—to study volcanoes like Cotopaxi firsthand. His sketches and oil studies from these trips became the basis for major paintings created after returning home. Between those years and his death in 1900, he completed around thirty major works depicting South American landscapes.
Unlike other notable works such as The Heart of the Andes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, DIA’s Cotopaxi shows a dramatic volcanic eruption over a gorge with ash turning the sky red-orange—a first for Church depicting such violence. The museum acquired this work in 1976.
Curated by Dr. Kenneth John Myers, Byron and Dorothy Gerson Curator of American Art at DIA, this installation also features three pieces on loan from Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum that document different stages from Church’s travels as well as Morning in the Andes (1863) by Mignot who joined him during one expedition. Myers said: “Together with Rembrandt Peale’s Court of Death (1820), James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875), and Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals (1932-1933), Cotopaxi is one of the most important, famous, and beloved works of art in the DIA’s fabulous collection of historic American art. We are thrilled to join with colleagues across the nation and world to celebrate both Church and his Cotopaxi.”
Further information about Guests Of Honor: Frederic Church’s Cotopaxi can be found at https://dia.org/events/exhibitions/guests-honor-frederic-churchs-cotopaxi.
