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The Bair Museum will feature works by Karl Bodmer from the Larson Collection of Bodmer Prints from June through October in 2021. The exhibition, Prince Maximilian of Wied Nuwied and Karl Bodmer-Travels on the Upper Missouri 1833-1834, tells the story of a German ethnographer and scientist and a young Swiss artist who set out from Germany one hundred and eighty nine years ago to travel to America. Maximilian’s goal was to create a scientific and comprehensive account of the tribes and natural environment of the Upper Missouri region. He hired Karl Bodmer to illustrate all aspects of their journey. After thirteen months on the Missouri the prince’s field journals contained over 500,000 words of handwritten narratives, notes, tables, tribal histories, and other significant and original social histories. Bodmer had painted and drawn hundreds of works and portraits of the most important Native American warriors and leaders of the early 19th century..  Bodmer oversaw the transformation of these works into hand colored aquatints to illustrate Maximillian’s two published volumes. The Bair exhibit features eighteen of these aquatints, accompanied by an original publication, extensive history, and a map of their journey.