There was a time when traveling into the American West meant disappearing into an exotic, wild land of the imagination, the way European explorers once thought of the Far East. When painter Alfred Jacob Miller joined an expedition, it was with the intention of visually documenting the landscape and people for the edification of his less adventurous contemporaries. Miller traveled in 1837 from St. Louis along the Oregon trail into Wyoming. He made more than 100 sketches, which became the basis for a series of commissioned paintings of the American frontier, a glimpse of the unmapped world afforded at the time to a singular few. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (4525 Oak, 816-751-1278) presents Romancing the West: Alfred Jacob Miller in the Bank of America Collection, an exhibition of 30 of Miller's works documenting the lives of American Indians, mountain men, wildlife and the American landscape. The show runs through January 9. — Chris Packham Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thursdays, Fridays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays, 12-5 p.m. Starts: Sept. 29. Continues through Jan. 9, 2010
