Olana Perspectives Webinar with Will Coleman

May 6, 2020 Olana’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions William L. Coleman, Ph.D. lead an illustrated talk entitled, “Olana as Epitome”.

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 of widely held dreams. Case studies will include the houses of Peter Paul Rubens in what is now Belgium, John Constable’s family home in the East of England, and William Birch’s “Springland” near Philadelphia, a largely forgotten early American artist’s house that …Read More

Olana Perspectives Webinar with Eleanor Jones Harvey

April 29, 2020

Dr. Eleanor Jones Harvey is Senior Curator for 19th-Century Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where she has worked since 2003.

In this special member’s event, Dr. Eleanor Jones Harvey shares her once in a lifetime exhibition Alexander Von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, which is currently installed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum with plans to open to the public later this year and to remain on view through early January. She will start by sharing some behind the scenes perspective on the years of …Read More

Subject Specialist Talk: Frederic Edwin Church & W.H. Osborn: Art, Patronage and Friendship by Dr. Christine Isabelle Oaklander

April 22, 2020

Christine Oaklander is an independent art historian and private art consultant with over thirty years of expertise in the field of American art. A native New Yorker, she was inspired to plunge into the mystery, history, and beauty of American art by posts at the New-York Historical Society and Spanierman Gallery in the 1980s.

Dr. Oaklander spoke on the lifelong friendship between Frederic Church and William Henry Osborn, Church’s principal patron. Osborn (1820-1894) was a self-made man with a fortune he …Read More

Subject Specialist Talk: David Huntington and the Saving of Olana by Dorothy Heyl

April 15, 2020

Dorothy Heyl, General Counsel/Chief Compliance Officer at Prima Capital Advisors focuses on the story of how Olana came to be saved is largely an untold tale of passion, generosity, and guts.

After Church’s daughter-in-law died in 1964, having preserved Olana for decades with her husband Louis Palmer Church, her heirs put Olana on the market. An option granted by the Sally Church estate set the race for funds against a ticking clock. This much of the tale is known and was breathlessly covered by the …Read More

Up Close + Personal A Collections Talk with Professor Katherine Manthorne

March 8, 2020

Professor of Art History, Graduate Center, City University of New York, Katherine Manthorne, focuses on ‘CAYAMBE’ BY FREDERIC CHURCH.

Professor Manthorne spoke about Frederic Church’s close study of nature and how he forged a tradition of traveler-art that spans from the 19th century to today. Watch

Up Close + Personal A Collections Talk with Will Coleman

February 9, 2020

Olana’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions William L. Coleman, Ph.D. focuses on “TROPICAL ORCHID” BY MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE.

This painting testifies to the complex friendship between artists Martin Heade and Frederic Church and served as inspiration for the upcoming exhibition, “Cross Pollination,” opening in 2021. Watch

Frederic Church’s OLANA Watch