Webinars
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 shows the roots of the Olana ideal even in this country. Of particular interest will be the lost houses of Frederic Church’s fellow travelers Albert Bierstadt and Jasper Francis Cropsey.
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 diplomacy and sleuthing required to assemble this exciting project, to which Frederic Church and Olana are central, including a number of loans from our collection. There will be a screening of a new video tour of this exhibition and discussion and questions will follow. Eleanor is a brilliant, original, iconoclastic, and charismatic voice in the art world and this event is not to be missed.
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 had earned through natural business acumen. Introduced by Jonathan Sturges, Osborn became fast friends with Church. Osborn not only owned some of Church’s best paintings, he helped finance the artist’s extended trip to the Holy Land and Europe in 1867-69, and the Osborn home in New York City served as the Church family’s New York City home. The friendship, which extended through both families, lasted three generations. The names Frederic(k) and Church are carried down in the Osborn family to the current day.
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 New York Times and numerous magazines at the time. David Huntington, a junior professor at Smith College, led the effort, beginning with the restoration of Church’s reputation. Huntington’s group prevented the sale from going forward, raised funds for its purchase, and eventually persuaded Governor Nelson Rockefeller to sign legislation permitting the state to acquire it.
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.
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.
