WEBINAR: Frederic Church, Mexico, and the Legacy of the Landscape Oil Sketch

Between 1881 and his death in 1900, Frederic Church made fifteen trips to Mexico. Inspired by the country’s varied topography and colonial architecture, he completed more than sixty plein-air oil sketches, graphite drawings, and finished paintings, while also collecting Mexican photographs, watercolors, books, ceramics, textiles, and Toltec reliefs. Although the last two decades of Church’s life are often dismissed as a period of unfulfilled potential marred by the artist’s failing health, an examination of his Mexican works reveals Church’s resilience, his ongoing engagement with international landscape traditions, and the significance of the landscape oil sketch–one of his greatest legacies. This virtual program is FREE and offered in conjunction with Frederic Church 200.

Dr. Shannon Vittoria, Associate Curator, American Art, LACMA

Shannon Vittoria is Associate Curator of American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her research addresses transnational landscape art and environmental studies, the history of art making in California, and the professionalization of women artists. Prior to joining the staff at LACMA in 2024, she was the Assistant Curator of American Painting and Drawing in the American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she co-curated the exhibitions Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo (in collaboration with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2021) and Artistic Encounters with Indigenous America (2019). She also contributed to the research and organization of Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings (in collaboration with the National Gallery, London, 2018); Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection (2018); Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered (2014); and The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution (2013). Vittoria holds a PhD from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where she completed her doctoral dissertation Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899)—now the subject of a book manuscript. In the past, she held curatorial fellowships at the New-York Historical Society, the Frick Collection, and the Morgan Library and Museum. In addition to her work reinstalling LACMA’s permanent collection in the newly opened David Geffen Galleries, she is co-curating the forthcoming exhibition California Collectives: Asian American Moderns, 1924-1965.

Frederic Edwin Church, Church of San Francisco, Cuernavaca, Mexico, January-February 1898. Oil paint on board, 7 3/4 x 11 1/2 in. (19.7 x 29.2 cm). New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Olana State Historic Site. Gift of Olana Preservation, Inc. and Museum Purchase, OL.1977.226