Renditions of a Changing Landscape in Lancaster County

Poster Presentations

The people and landscape of Lancaster County are changing. Population increases and economic success both result in the development and urbanization of a land once sought after for its fertile farm land; fields once abundant with corn and tobacco now find themselves stripped of nature’s splendor; barren plateaus at the doorsteps of shopping centers, malls, and housing developments. It is this nostalgia and this romantic notion of a “simpler” time that rallied the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists—Cezanne, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Van Gogh. This drove them to capture elements of the old towns of France before they turned to cities, to capture landscapes before they were scarred by the iron rail, and to capture nature before it was replaced by artifice. With this same desire to portray contemporary life, paintings were conducted to describe Lancaster County, placing visual emphasis on the mechanisms of societal change and ideological emphasis on the outcomes of change.