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 on three works in particular: Hiram Powers’ The Greek Slave, Henry “Box” Brown’s The Mirror of Slavery, and Frederic Edwin Church’s The Icebergs.

This webinar recording is available upon request. Please email education@olana.org.

During this webinar, Harvey Flad, Professor Emeritus of Geography at Vassar College, will share a personal perspective on how Olana’s views have been saved. Join Flad during this examination of how historic and aesthetic landscape, and other aspects of “community character,” has become a valued component of environmental review.

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. During this virtual webinar, Eleanor Jones Harvey will recount Church’s voyage, which encompasses inspiration, accolades, disappearance, and rediscovery.

Ever wondered who lived in the Hudson Valley long before Frederic Church and his family? During this on-site talk, join historian Heather Bruegl to learn more about the Native Nations that called New York State home long before colonization. This program will touch on the Haudenosaunee, the Lenape and the Mohicans and will discuss history and land loss.

Against the backdrop of the picturesque Falls, Blacks cultivated a global and green outlook, developing the Niagara Movement which birthed the NAACP in the midst of Niagara’s wonders, whirlpools, and waves. During this webinar, dann j. Broyld will examine how Niagara, a vitally important painting subject for Church, speaks to a larger transformative transnational environment with potent importance for Blacks in the 19th century and beyond.

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.