Friends of the Susquehanna River Art Collection
Friends of the Susquehanna River Art Collection
Introduction
In May 2025, The Friends of the Susquehanna River Art Collection was formed as a 501c3 not-for-profit organization by a group of arts patrons with the vision of acquiring the existing core artworks of the Susquehanna River Art Collection amassed by artist and curator Rob Evans and arts patron and philanthropist James Snyder, and to expanding and caring for the collection until a new, purpose-built museum is established.
The Friends will raise funds to secure, insure, and care for the collection, support growth through acquisitions, provide for curatorial consulting, and underwrite supportive programming in advance of transferring the collection to its permanent museum home, anticipated to be developed as part of the Susquehanna Discovery Center and Heritage Park being developed by the Susquehanna National Heritage Area at the historic Mifflin Farm outside Wrightsville.
Over the next several years, while a museum is in the planning and development stages, the collection will be housed in the renovated farmhouse galleries at the Ingrid Graham Historic Hellam Nature Preserve owned by the Lancaster Conservancy, whose extraordinary efforts preserving thousands of acres of Susquehanna watershed blends perfectly with the mission of the Friends. The collection will be available for viewing by appointment and for educational and interpretive programming created in partnership with the Friends, the Lancaster Conservancy, Susquehanna National Heritage Area and other organizations promoting art, history and environmental stewardship.
Working with the collection founder and curator Rob Evans and former art museum director Terrie Sultan as consultants, the Friends of the Susquehanna River Art Collection will ensure:
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That the Collection is enhanced and expanded through careful stewardship and scholarship
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That many voices and artistic perspectives are represented to tell the full story of the River’s creative legacy and contemporary meaning
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That scholarship in American art history and the role the art and artists of the Susquehanna River has played will continue through exhibitions, programs, and publications.
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That educational partnerships are developed in collaboration with the Lancaster Conservancy and the Susquehanna National Heritage Area to enhance community engagement
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That the development of a dedicated art museum meets professional standards
The "Drawing on the Susquehanna" collection on view at the Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College
Background
For the last two decades Pennsylvania artist Rob Evans has embarked on an exciting journey exploring his roots as a painter of the Susquehanna River Valley. In so doing, he has uncovered a long forgotten but important artistic legacy of national significance, curating two major touring exhibits, and building, with the assistance of art patron James Snyder, a permanent collection of Susquehanna River art, spanning four centuries, which includes over 100 paintings, drawings, etchings, engravings, lithographs, illustrated books, maps and decorated china. The collection chronicles the unfolding of American history along the Susquehanna's shores, from first contact with Native populations in the early 17th century all the way to the construction of dams and power plants nearly 400 years later. In addition to impressive easel paintings meant for exhibition halls and wealthy patrons homes, this collection also includes a diverse array of works showing how artists disseminated their art to a broad public via commercial partnerships, utilizing the most current printing technologies available, not only self-promoting, but helping make the Susquehanna one of the most popular and well known rivers worldwide.
After Jasper Cropsey, American Autumn, Starucca Valley, Erie R. Road, 19 color chromolithograph, c.1867
The Susquehanna played a key role in influencing and inspiring some of the first truly American artists, writers and poets. One of those was writer James Fenimore Cooper, whose 1823 novel, The Pioneers: Or the Sources of the Susquehanna, widely regarded as the first authentic American novel, sent shock waves through the artistic community, spawning a new genuinely American landscape movement focused on America's vanishing wilderness. Set in the lake country that forms the headwaters of the Susquehanna, The Pioneers had a profound influence on many artists including a young Thomas Cole, who later would become known as the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painting, the first truly American art movement, and precursor of the modern environmental movement. This collection helps establish, however, that the Susquehanna River actually preceded the Hudson in having a key formative role in the formation of this movement. Although no formal "Susquehanna School" of painters has ever been delineated, this collection shows that such an influential school has taken shape over the last several centuries and continues to this day. To learn more about the collection click here.
After Thomas Cole, The Headwaters of the Juniata, red transferware ceramic soup plate produced by William Adams and Sons, Staffordshire, England, c.1831-61
Currier and Ives, The Valley of the Susquehanna, hand-colored lithograph, c.1870s
It has long been Evans' dream to coalesce these collections of Susquehanna River art into a museum dedicated to the river's important legacy, much like the Brandywine River Museum celebrates that river's important heritage.
To facilitate that dream, Friends of the Susquehanna River Art Collection is currently exploring a potential dedicated art museum fully integrated into the Susquehanna Discovery Center and Heritage Park being developed by the Susquehanna National Heritage Area at the historic Mifflin Farm outside Wrightsville.
Over the next several years, while a museum is in the planning and development stages, the collection will be housed in the renovated farmhouse galleries at the Ingrid Graham Historic Hellam Nature Preserve owned by the Lancaster Conservancy, whose extraordinary efforts preserving thousands of acres of Susquehanna watershed blends perfectly with the mission of the Friends. The collection will be available for viewing by appointment and for educational and interpretive programming run by the Lancaster Conservancy, Susquehanna National Heritage Area and other organizations promoting art, history and environmental stewardship.
Friends of the Susquehanna River Art Collection and a new museum for Susquehanna River Art
Drawing on the Susquehanna Collection on view at the farmhouse galleries at the Ingrid Graham Historic Hellam Nature Preserve
Concept sketch for the Susquehanna National Heritage Area Discovery Center and Art Museum
(courtesy Murphy & Dittenhafer Architects)