Moving Art, Moving Audiences: Nineteenth-Century Travelling Exhibitions and the Matter of Abolition

February 7, 2023

In the mid-nineteenth century, Americans faced a new way to encounter art: the traveling exhibition. Sculptures, panoramas, and paintings crisscrossed the country, appearing at venues that included exhibition and entertainment halls, galleries, reform societies, and fairs. During this virtual webinar, Caitlin Meehye Beach will explore the phenomenon of traveling exhibitions as they intersected a pressing concern of the day: the abolition of slavery. Following the publication of her 2022 book, Sculpture at the Ends of Slavery, this presentation focuses …Read More

The View from Olana: Preserving America’s Cultural Landscape

January 12, 2023

In 1977, a proposed nuclear power plant on the west bank of the Hudson River threatened scenic views from Olana. The potential visual impact of the proposed project on Frederic Church’s view from Olana was instrumental in denying approval for the plant. Years later, similar arguments were used to prevent the construction of an immense cement plant north of Olana, once again using the site’s integral viewshed to protect historic landscapes.

During this webinar, Harvey Flad, Professor Emeritus of Geography at Vassar College, …Read More

The Intrepid Quest for Church’s “Icebergs”

Thursday, November 17, 2022 What happens when an artist and his travel companion set forth to chase icebergs? The immediate result is a suite of drawings and oil sketches created to inspire future paintings, and a travelogue written to draw attention to the artist’s dedication to his craft. Frederic Church’s massive painting, The Icebergs, painted shortly after the trip, is the capstone of that adventure. But the painting soon embarked on its own journey across the Atlantic to England, where it was presumed lost for more than a century. During this virtual webinar, Eleanor …Read More

Impressions of Niagara through the Vantage Point of Black Escape Artists, Black Activists, and Landscape Artist Frederic Church

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Niagara Falls separates the United States and Canada and in the 19th Century, Blacks employed international lines to pit the two nations against one another for the best possible outcomes. As Blacks from both countries crossed a fluid border marked by two-way movement and social collaboration, they were in awe of the Falls famously captured on canvas by Frederic Church in 1867. Against the backdrop of the picturesque Falls, Blacks cultivated a global and green outlook, developing …Read More

Art, Ecology, and Olana’s Native Forest

Wednesday, October 19, 2022 During this virtual webinar, Sean Sawyer, President of The Olana Partnership will discuss how Frederic Church engaged with the emerging field of ecology in the 19th century. By following in Alexander von Humboldt’s footsteps in his meteoric rise as the country’s most celebrated landscape painter and then in his four decade-long development of Olana, Church immersed himself in “landscape architecturing” to speak to the history of the land and human impact on it.

As a painter, Church defined our national identity as inextricably linked to the majesty of the natural world. …Read More

Amelia Edwards at Olana and the Birth of Egyptian Archaeology

Tuesday, April 5, 2022 First published at the tender age of seven, Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards was a successful novelist and travel writer. In the winter of 1873 -1874, Edwards went to Egypt for the first time sailing up the Nile in a houseboat, visiting many of the most important sites, and documenting her travels. Her illustrated record of the trip, A Thousand Miles up the Nile, was published in 1877 and became a bestseller. The Churches’ own library at Olana housed this foundational work of Egyptology, along with along …Read More

“Catskill’s China Painter:” The Botanical Art of Emily Cole and the Politics of Women’s Work within American Painting Traditions

March 15, 2022 Join Amanda Malmstrom (she/her), Associate Curator at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, for this presentation exploring the life, work, and legacy of Emily Cole (1843-1913), a lifelong artist of botanicals and painted porcelain. Emily chose as her subject plants and their flowers, close-up and in isolation, celebrating the Catskill landscape through methods differing from that of Hudson River School painters like her father Thomas Cole, who depicted the sweeping, picturesque, and sublime vistas of landscapes. Emily Cole …Read More

Painting Against the Odds: Edward Mitchell Bannister’s Unlikely Career in Late 19th Century America

March 3, 2022

Edward Mitchell Bannister’s career as a successful practicing artist in New England during the late nineteenth century was considered normal. He accepted commissions, painted, socialized with his peers, and sailed his boat along the Narragansett Bay in his leisure time. But, as an African American artist living during the 19th century, the level of normalcy Edward Bannister experienced was, in fact, quite exceptional. Just ten years prior to Bannister’s winning a major art award at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, the United …Read More

Traditional Patterns and New Narratives: Exploring Toile de Jouy February 18, 2022 During this program, Sheila Bridges and Richard Saja will discuss the ways the legacy of toile has been altered, homaged, and expanded, moderated by journalist Sabine Rothman. As Sheila Bridges’ prominent toile series incorporates new and unexpected images into a toile motif—such as scenes reflecting Sheila Bridges’ African American heritage or images of Frederic Church painting a cell tower—Saja uses embroidery to create unexpected images out of traditional toile fabric. This lively moderated conversation will examine how a historic design can be used to tell new stories and …Read More

History “Gone Viral:” Negotiating the Past through the Present

February 3, 2022

Join artist Valerie Hegarty and art historian Alexis L. Boylan for a virtual presentation and discussion about how Hegarty’s recent work connects the past and present, incorporating and interrogating historical narratives from the 19th century and beyond. Joined by art historian Alexis Boylan, Hegarty will examine how her 2021 exhibition, Gone Viral, engages with our own contemporary history while drawing from her past work and larger histories. Inspired by the artist’s personal journal entries from the onset of the COVID, Hegarty’s work in Gone Viral grapples with the …Read More