Boats and Trains featured the work of Swiss artist Francois Viscontini. The show was organized by the Renaissance Society as part of the exhibition A Swiss Dialectic, which took place at four Chicago institutions: The Renaissance Society, The Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House, The Museum of Contemporary Art, and Hyde Park Art Center. This group exhibition commemorated the 700th anniversary of the country’s political strife. The exhibition commemorated these political events by examining the philosophical, cultural, and intellectual characteristics of contemporary Swiss artists.
The exhibitions of contemporary art from the French, German, Italian and Romansch speaking regions of Switzerland, was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Illinois Arts Council, and the CityArts Program of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.