Oregon Historical Society

Emergency Messages as of 10:06 AM, Thu. Nov 12

No information currently posted.

logo

Subscribe to receive FlashAlert messages from Oregon Historical Society.

Manage my existing Subscription

News Release

New Oregon Historical Society Exhibition Explores How Artists Helped Establish Crater Lake National Park - 11/12/26

Featuring 21 original paintings, Creating a Masterpiece examines the power of art to shape the public’s understanding of Crater Lake — and the stories that were left out.

 

Download: Press Images & Captions

 

Portland, OR — Long before Crater Lake became one of Oregon’s most recognizable landmarks, its impossibly blue waters and dramatic volcanic landscape captured the imaginations of a handful of artists. Their paintings brought the lake’s extraordinary beauty to audiences across the country, helped build support for its preservation, and played a surprising role in establishing it as a national park.

 

Opening November 20, 2026, at the Oregon Historical Society (OHS), Creating a Masterpiece: Artists and the Origins of Crater Lake National Park explores how artists transformed a relatively little-known Oregon landscape into a national fascination. Featuring 21 original paintings — many of which have never been displayed together — alongside historical photographs, correspondence, illustrations, and other objects, the exhibition examines the intersection of art, science, conservation, and Indigenous history.

 

As Crater Lake National Park approaches its 125th anniversary in 2027, the exhibition offers a closer look at the artists whose work helped shape the park’s story. During the late nineteenth century, relatively few Euro-Americans had seen Crater Lake in person. While written descriptions, black-and-white photographs, and illustrations circulated, it was painters who first brought the lake’s vivid colors to life for audiences far beyond Oregon.

 

“The goal of Creating a Masterpiece is not to present you with the familiar story of how Crater Lake National Park came to be, but to offer an unknown version of the park’s origins that has been literally hiding in plain sight,” said historian and exhibition co-curator Peter Boag.

 

Artists including James Everett Stuart, Grace Russell Fountain, Mabel Russell, and William Samuel Parrott helped popularize Crater Lake through their paintings and exhibitions. Their work also became an important tool in the campaign to establish a national park. In 1902, as Congress debated the creation of Crater Lake National Park, one of Oregon artist Grace Russell Fountain’s paintings was displayed in the U.S. Capitol, giving lawmakers a vivid impression of the landscape they were being asked to protect. That same year, Crater Lake became the nation’s fifth national park and Oregon’s only national park.

 

But the story of Crater Lake extends far beyond its recognition by newcomers. The lake is located on the ancestral lands of the Klamath Tribes, who have known this sacred place as giiwas for thousands of years. Klamath and Modoc people witnessed the volcanic eruption and collapse that formed the landscape, sharing through oral tradition their experiences and enduring cultural and spiritual relationships with the region.

 

The exhibition also considers how western landscape paintings helped shape — and limit — public understanding of this place. While artists frequently included Native people in their depictions of those landscapes, they largely excluded Indigenous presence from their paintings of Crater Lake. These images presented the area around Crater Lake as an untouched wilderness, obscuring the people who had known, lived with, and cared for it long before the arrival of white settlers.

 

“At a time when verbal descriptions, however vibrant, and black-and-white photographs, however amazing, increasingly circulated in newspapers, books, and government reports, they could not capture the colorful beauty that one needs to see to believe,” said Boag. “It was left to painters of landscape to perform this role. But like writers, illustrators, and photographers, artists offer a view of Crater Lake very much shaped by the times in which they lived.”

 

Through the paintings and stories on view, Creating a Masterpiece invites visitors to look beyond the familiar images of Crater Lake and consider how art influences what we see, what we value, and whose stories become part of our shared history.

 

In addition to the exhibition, a special issue of OHS’s peer-reviewed, public history journal, the Oregon Historical Quarterly (OHQ), is dedicated to this history. “Crater Lake and Artistic Imagination,” predominantly written by Boag, provides an even deeper reflection on how artists’ canvases influenced the creation of Oregon’s only national park at the site in 1902. Additional essays by Angie Morrill, an enrolled citizen of the Klamath Tribes, Michael Childers, and Lisa Gadinas offer perspectives on the enduring cultural significance of giiwas, the complexities of interpreting western history, and the artistic traditions that influenced generations of Northwest painters. The Fall 2026 issue of OHQ is available to purchase through the OHS Museum Store and is a benefit of OHS membership.

 

Creating a Masterpiece: Artists and the Origins of Crater Lake National Park will be on view at the Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Avenue in Portland, from November 20, 2026, through January 9, 2028. OHS is open Monday through Saturday, 10am–5pm, and Sunday, 12pm–5pm. Admission is free for OHS members, Multnomah County residents, and youth 17 and under. Learn more and plan your visit at ohs.org/craterlake.

 

 

About the Oregon Historical Society

 

For more than 125 years, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and complex as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.

New Oregon Historical Society Exhibition Explores How Artists Helped Establish Crater Lake National Park - 11/12/26

Featuring 21 original paintings, Creating a Masterpiece examines the power of art to shape the public’s understanding of Crater Lake — and the stories that were left out.

 

Download: Press Images & Captions

 

Portland, OR — Long before Crater Lake became one of Oregon’s most recognizable landmarks, its impossibly blue waters and dramatic volcanic landscape captured the imaginations of a handful of artists. Their paintings brought the lake’s extraordinary beauty to audiences across the country, helped build support for its preservation, and played a surprising role in establishing it as a national park.

 

Opening November 20, 2026, at the Oregon Historical Society (OHS), Creating a Masterpiece: Artists and the Origins of Crater Lake National Park explores how artists transformed a relatively little-known Oregon landscape into a national fascination. Featuring 21 original paintings — many of which have never been displayed together — alongside historical photographs, correspondence, illustrations, and other objects, the exhibition examines the intersection of art, science, conservation, and Indigenous history.

 

As Crater Lake National Park approaches its 125th anniversary in 2027, the exhibition offers a closer look at the artists whose work helped shape the park’s story. During the late nineteenth century, relatively few Euro-Americans had seen Crater Lake in person. While written descriptions, black-and-white photographs, and illustrations circulated, it was painters who first brought the lake’s vivid colors to life for audiences far beyond Oregon.

 

“The goal of Creating a Masterpiece is not to present you with the familiar story of how Crater Lake National Park came to be, but to offer an unknown version of the park’s origins that has been literally hiding in plain sight,” said historian and exhibition co-curator Peter Boag.

 

Artists including James Everett Stuart, Grace Russell Fountain, Mabel Russell, and William Samuel Parrott helped popularize Crater Lake through their paintings and exhibitions. Their work also became an important tool in the campaign to establish a national park. In 1902, as Congress debated the creation of Crater Lake National Park, one of Oregon artist Grace Russell Fountain’s paintings was displayed in the U.S. Capitol, giving lawmakers a vivid impression of the landscape they were being asked to protect. That same year, Crater Lake became the nation’s fifth national park and Oregon’s only national park.

 

But the story of Crater Lake extends far beyond its recognition by newcomers. The lake is located on the ancestral lands of the Klamath Tribes, who have known this sacred place as giiwas for thousands of years. Klamath and Modoc people witnessed the volcanic eruption and collapse that formed the landscape, sharing through oral tradition their experiences and enduring cultural and spiritual relationships with the region.

 

The exhibition also considers how western landscape paintings helped shape — and limit — public understanding of this place. While artists frequently included Native people in their depictions of those landscapes, they largely excluded Indigenous presence from their paintings of Crater Lake. These images presented the area around Crater Lake as an untouched wilderness, obscuring the people who had known, lived with, and cared for it long before the arrival of white settlers.

 

“At a time when verbal descriptions, however vibrant, and black-and-white photographs, however amazing, increasingly circulated in newspapers, books, and government reports, they could not capture the colorful beauty that one needs to see to believe,” said Boag. “It was left to painters of landscape to perform this role. But like writers, illustrators, and photographers, artists offer a view of Crater Lake very much shaped by the times in which they lived.”

 

Through the paintings and stories on view, Creating a Masterpiece invites visitors to look beyond the familiar images of Crater Lake and consider how art influences what we see, what we value, and whose stories become part of our shared history.

 

In addition to the exhibition, a special issue of OHS’s peer-reviewed, public history journal, the Oregon Historical Quarterly (OHQ), is dedicated to this history. “Crater Lake and Artistic Imagination,” predominantly written by Boag, provides an even deeper reflection on how artists’ canvases influenced the creation of Oregon’s only national park at the site in 1902. Additional essays by Angie Morrill, an enrolled citizen of the Klamath Tribes, Michael Childers, and Lisa Gadinas offer perspectives on the enduring cultural significance of giiwas, the complexities of interpreting western history, and the artistic traditions that influenced generations of Northwest painters. The Fall 2026 issue of OHQ is available to purchase through the OHS Museum Store and is a benefit of OHS membership.

 

Creating a Masterpiece: Artists and the Origins of Crater Lake National Park will be on view at the Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Avenue in Portland, from November 20, 2026, through January 9, 2028. OHS is open Monday through Saturday, 10am–5pm, and Sunday, 12pm–5pm. Admission is free for OHS members, Multnomah County residents, and youth 17 and under. Learn more and plan your visit at ohs.org/craterlake.

 

 

About the Oregon Historical Society

 

For more than 125 years, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and complex as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.