Webinars

While the mid-19th century is characterized by Frederic Church’s creation of his artist-designed landscape and studio, Olana, it was also a fraught period in American life. The Civil War, high infant mortality, the dangers of childbirth, and numerous infectious diseases all kept death in the forefront of American consciousness during the 1800s. Mourning jewelry, post-mortem photography, memorial portraits, and landscape paintings sought to give solace to the living.

Presented in conjunction with the 2024 exhibition Afterglow: Frederic Church and the Landscape of Memory, this talk focuses on memorial paintings and objects associated with Frederic Church’s family. During this virtual webinar, Professor Susan L. Aberth will frame these practices within a wider context of American art history.

Susan L. Aberth is the Edith C. Blum Professor in the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College, where she teaches a number of courses that deal with death, art, and spirituality in the Americas. In addition to publications on the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, her work has also appeared in Artforum, Journal of Surrealism of the Americas, Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies, and Black Mirror.

Allegra Davis is the former Associate Curator for The Olana Partnership at Olana State Historic Site. Most recently, she curated the exhibition Afterglow: Frederic Church and the Landscape of Memory at Olana and edited the accompanying catalogue from Hirmer Publishers. Allegra joined The Olana Partnership in 2019 after graduating from Smith College and completing a curatorial fellowship at Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park. She is now continuing her education at Boston University.

Over the past decade, Thomas Woltz and his firm have led the renewal and restoration of Frederic Church’s 250-acre designed landscape at Olana, a NY State Historic Site and National Historic Landmark. Woltz will focus on the vision within the award-winning Olana Strategic Landscape Design Plan, which includes the siting of the soon-to-be-completed Frederic Church Center for Art & Landscape.

Thomas Woltz and the work of his firm, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW), envisions design as a deeply collaborative, cross-disciplinary, research-based process essential to forging a resilient and vital future for our civic spaces. Embodying our shared histories and the ethos of local and regional narratives and materials, NBW’s designs foster deep connections between people and the land. Thomas and NBW have worked as partners with The Olana Partnership since 2011.

Recorded live May 7, 2024 for The Olana Partnership.

What do Frederic Church’s landscapes, New York’s Central Park, and Niagara Falls Reservation have in common? In this virtual discussion, Rebecca Bedell argues that, beyond their shared aesthetics and Church’s involvement with all three, they all are, in a sense, memorial landscapes. Watch today to learn more about how they are also therapeutic landscapes, offering solace and healing to those abraded by modern life. This webinar is offered in anticipation of Afterglow: Frederic Church and the Landscape of Memory, which opens May 12.

Rebecca Bedell is the Professor of American Art at Wellesley College. She is the author of the award-winning books The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting and Moved to Tears: Rethinking the Art of the Sentimental in the United States, as well as numerous essays about nineteenth-century landscape art.

Join top interior designers Sheila Bridges and Young Huh for a very special virtual opportunity as they reflect on Frederic Church’s interior design aesthetic, sharing thoughts on the carefully curated rooms of his artist-designed house at Olana. This lively talk will be moderated by esteemed journalist Mitchell Owens and will discuss how Church’s interior design vision is both rooted in the tradition of 19th century interiors and connected to our own contemporary trends. Participants will consider how thoughtful choices and intentional decisions bred Church’s unique aesthetic and contributed to the creation of Church’s masterwork, Olana.

How can landscape painting serve as a source of refuge and self-reflection in today’s challenging world? During this virtual webinar, Cuban American artist Lydia Rubio will discuss how her work reinterprets the notion of “landscape,” taking inspiration from Frederic Church and members of the “Hudson River School”. Much like Church himself, Rubio’s paintings take inspiration from her travels as well as the landscape and ecology of the Hudson River and are deeply informed by her interest in philosophy, geometry, and Latin American culture. Lydia Rubio is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Born in Cuba and raised in Puerto Rico, she is the third generation of women painters in her family. Her 43-year studio practice started in New York City. After years based in Miami and Bogota, she now lives in Hudson, New York. Her work consists of paintings, unique journals and large site-specific installations. Painting is at the core of her practice, primarily based on a conceptual system, not a fixed style.