J Gray Sweeney

J. Gray Sweeney is an historian who has published and curated widely in American art history. He received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Indiana University for a study of the artist-explorers of the American West and the origins of the National Parks. He has written about regional American art and the influence of Thomas Cole on the formation of the Hudson River School. Among his recent studies are The Columbus of the Woods: Daniel Boone and the Typology of Manifest Destiny (1992), Drawing the...See more

J. Gray Sweeney is an historian who has published and curated widely in American art history. He received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Indiana University for a study of the artist-explorers of the American West and the origins of the National Parks. He has written about regional American art and the influence of Thomas Cole on the formation of the Hudson River School. Among his recent studies are The Columbus of the Woods: Daniel Boone and the Typology of Manifest Destiny (1992), Drawing the Borderline: Artists-Explorers and the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey, and contributions and an essay "An 'Indomitable Explorative Enterprise': Inventing national parks for Inventing Acadia: Artists and Tourists at Mount Desert" (1999). He is a professor of art history at Arizona State University. See less