Webinars

Frederic Church based his large-scale painting The Heart of the Andes (1859) on his two trips to South America in 1853 and 1857. This webinar will explore how Church navigated the business side of his craft and ultimately ensured the painting’s place in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In this talk, Eleanor Harvey takes us on a nocturnal voyage of discovery through some of Church’s most significant paintings. Central to this talk will be a close look at one of Church’s paintings, The Meteor of 1860, in which the artist took a significant current event and invested it with both scientific and political meaning.

Church’s collection of travel photography provides a new perspective on his work as a landscape painter and sheds light on the 19th-century philosophical outlook that the world was collectible and, consequently, knowable. During this webinar with independent photo historian Corey Keller, considers how making and collecting photographs offered a medium through which the world could be seen, sorted, and understood in Church’s time.

October 14, 2023

A walk and discussion about how human hands shape the landscape and how the land transforms us. During this program, Laura Chávez Silverman, founding naturalist of The Outside Institute, guides participants in accessing their curiosity and sense of awe in nature.

Laura Chávez Silverman is the Founding Naturalist of The Outside Institute, where she shares her deep love of Nature. Laura frequently speaks on topics including the psychic and health benefits of engaging with Nature, sustainable foraging and how interconnected systems inspire better living. From 2010-17, Laura wrote Glutton for Life, a blog that explored Catskill living, including cooking with seasonal and foraged foods and gardening.

September 15, 2023

During this workshop guided by Antonia Estela Pérez, participants will learn about several medicinal and food plants growing in Olana and how we can build mutually regenerative relationships. Antonia will discuss basic frameworks for how to begin building relationships with the plants. Participants will turn to the plants to learn some of the stories of the land, how they got there, and the messages the plants have to share with us all about the history of settler colonialism and displacement.

Antonia Estela Pérez is a Chilean-American clinical herbalist, gardener, educator, community organizer, and founder. Antonia combines a decade of experience studying and working with plant medicine with her studies in environmental and urban studies at Bard College, Clinical Herbalism at Arborvitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine, and learning with herbalists and elders throughout Central and South America. Antonia co-founded Herban Cura, an herbal medicine and education project that centers the knowledge and stories of Indigenous, Black, Queer, and Trans communities.

Guest curator David Hartt discusses his artistic process and vision for Terraforming: Olana’s Historic Photography Collection Unearthed. Learn more about how Hartt was inspired by Olana’s collection of nearly 2,000 19th-century international photographic prints to reflect on the ways in which human culture and activity shape our land.

August 26, 2023

This program was offered in connection with this season’s exhibition, Terraforming: Olana’s Historic Photography Collection Unearthed. Lean into late summer, discover common plant allies at Olana, and learn more about their medicinal benefits and natural wisdom. During this nature walk and workshop, Nkoula Badila, founder of Grow Black Hudson, guided participants through Olana’s landscape, discussing the health benefits of regional species and the ways we can connect with nature through movement and herbal medicine.

Nkoula Badila is the Founder, Grow Black Hudson, a local sustainable farming initiative, is deeply rooted in the histories of inequity related to the black experience with our national food system. A musician and artist, Nkoula is experienced in the performing arts and practices of healing movement. Nkoula has interned at local farms and after graduating high school, she participated in Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WOOFing), farming in Mexico, Belize, Haiti, and California.

During this virtual webinar, learn more about the work of contemporary artist Mark Igloliorte, whose work featured in Olana’s exhibition Chasing Icebergs: Art and a Disappearing Landscape. During this presentation, he will track the ways language, landscape, and personal perspectives inform his work. A conversation with curator and scholar Franchesca Hebert-Spence will follow.

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.