Episode No. 191 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a Fourth of July holiday weekend clips show featuring art historian Nenette Luarca-Shoaf.

Luarca-Shoaf is one of the co-curators of “Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River,” which is on view at its final venue, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, through September 15.

Bingham was the first significant American artist to take the newly opened trans-Appalachian West as his subject. Bingham’s paintings of waterways are typically presumed to picture rivers in his native state of Missouri, but in reality they represent the river culture that dominated trade and the movement of people through the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi River valleys. Think of them as some of American art’s first significant grappling with the enormity and variety of our continent. The exhibition originated at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth before moving to the Saint Louis Art Museum.

For images of art discussed on the program, click here.

Air date: July 2, 2015.