Your Friend, Frederic E. Church - Albany Institute of History & Art

2026 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hudson River School painter Frederic E. Church (1826–1900). To celebrate the artist’s legacy, the Albany Institute of History & Art presents Your Friend, Frederic E. Church, an exhibition that focuses on the friendship between Church and Albany-based sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer (1817–1904). Palmer was among the leading portrait sculptors of the second half of the nineteenth century. Friends for half a century, Church and Palmer (and their wives) wrote to each other about their art, their children, and their respective farms, and visited each other frequently.