Partners in Design: Frederic Church, Calvert Vaux, and the Making of Olana’s Main House With Sean E. Sawyer, Ph.D September 30, 2020 Frederic Church, America’s first international art star, returned from his travels through the Near East in 1869 filled with inspiration for the great ...Read More

Sightlines on the Hudson With Mary Roberts September 9, 2020 What kind of world is it that Frederic Church was creating in his Persian-inspired home on the Hudson? This lecture proposes some answers to this question by analyzing three of the interior sightlines within his ...Read More

Persia on the Hudson: Ali Muhammad Isfahani and Ceramic Production in Nineteenth-Century Iran With Farshid Emami July 22, 2020 Among the works kept at Olana are a group of ceramic tiles and objects attributed to Ali Muhammad Isfahani, a master of ceramic production active in ...Read More

Adding India: Lockwood de Forest’s Contribution to Olana’s Interiors With Sarah Coffin July 8, 2020 Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932), a painter and interior designer started his artistic career painting with Frederic Church at Olana. De Forest’s main contribution to Olana came after he set up ...Read More

Frederic Church’s Middle Eastern Costume Collection: Its Inspiration and Impact With Hanan Munayyer June 24, 2020 As Frederic and Isabel Church travelled in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine in 1868, they commented on the “picturesque costumed individuals” (Isabel’s diary, 1868) they saw, inspiring them to bring ...Read More

Unplanned Views: The Geological History of Olana With Robert and Johanna Titus June 10, 2020 The 250 acres of land that comprise Frederic Church’s OLANA became the canvas for his pioneering endeavors in landscape architecture. Participants will learn about the geological history of Olana and ...Read More

Olana Perspectives: After Icebergs at Cooper Hewitt With Caitlin Condell May 27, 2020 In the summer of 1859, Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)—the most celebrated American landscape painter of his time—journeyed to Newfoundland and Labrador to study and sketch icebergs. These studies, drawn from Cooper Hewitt’s ...Read More

Olana Perspectives:"Only the Roar Left Out": Frederic Church and Niagara Falls With Sarah Cash May 20, 2020 This lecture presents aspects of Cash’s ongoing research into Frederic Church’s paintings and drawings of Niagara Falls, focusing on one of the most important landscape paintings in the ...Read More

Olana Perspectives: Frederic Church and the Metropolitan Museum of Art With Dr. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser May 13, 2020 This talk focuses on the extraordinary role played by Frederic Church (1826-1900) as a founding trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Church helped to establish the ...Read More

Olana Perspectives: Olana as Epitome With Dr. William L. Coleman May 6, 2020 This talk places Olana in a transatlantic history of artist’s houses, and of painter-architects, with the goal of showing the place we love is not an intriguing anomaly but rather the crystallization ...Read More