Castellani Art Museum presents reimagination of previous exhibitions of Amos Sangster, John Pfahl

The Castellani Art Museum will present an exhibition that reflects on the legacy of two artists whose works, spanning two centuries, captured the beauty and grandeur of the Niagara Region. “Lake to Lake: John Pfahl and Amos W. Sangster” will be on display from April 14 through Dec. 20.

In 1985, several community celebrations took place in Niagara Falls to commemorate the establishment of the Niagara Reservation, the first state park in the U.S., which protected land adjacent to the falls from development by industry and tourism. The staff of the Buscaglia-Castellani Art Gallery (the precursor to the Castellani Art Museum) and local historians formed the Amos W. Sangster Niagara River Centennial Committee to mark the 100th anniversary of the creation of Sangster’s monumental portfolio of 153 etchings, The Niagara River and falls from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

An exhibition of selections from this portfolio was organized and took place from May 7 through Sept. 7, 1986. From that same committee came the parallel exhibition “Arcadia Revisited, photographs by John Pfahl,” which captured images from the same sites as Sangster between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

In this re-imagined exhibition, 12 plates (10 not shown in “A Sangster Celebration”) and 14 vignettes will be featured with Pfahl’s photographs (11 original Pfahl pairings from “Arcadia Revisited”) to give a larger look at these two important bodies of work against the landscape as it stands today.