NEW HAVEN, CT.- The Yale Center for British Art is the only U.S. venue for the first retrospective of works by eighteenth-century landscape painter William Hodges. On view from January 27 to April 24, 2005, "William Hodges, 1744–1797: The Art of Exploration" features nearly 50 oil paintings by Hodges, whose career as an artist took him to Polynesia, Antarctica, New Zealand, and the South Pacific with the renowned explorer Captain James Cook. He was also the first professional British painter to travel to India, under the patronage of the East India Company. Organized by the National Maritime Museum in London, the exhibition underscores Hodges’s central role in disseminating visual knowledge of distant lands and cultures during the greatest era of European geographical exploration.