Webinars

Like many Americans, artist Frederic Church was an avid coffee drinker, preferring it to tea and favoring beans from Latin America, a frequent destination for his travels. During Church’s lifetime, the United States became the largest importer of coffee in the world, sourcing most of their product from Brazil. Striking World’s Fair exhibits and other celebratory imagery obscured shortsighted agricultural methods and exploitative labor practices upon which this industry relied. During this virtual webinar, Caroline Gillaspie will explore Brazil’s impressive agricultural exhibit at the 1876 U.S. Centennial exhibition alongside other artworks depicting coffee drinking in the United States as they reflected the developing taste for the beverage in the 19th century.

Caroline Gillaspie is the Assistant Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She received her PhD in Art History from the CUNY Graduate Center where she completed a dissertation titled, “‘Delicious Libation’: The Art of the Coffee Trade from Brazil to the United States, 1797-1888.” Much of her research is focused on ecocritical approaches to art history with a particular focus on landscape painting across the Americas. She was a proud docent at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site for six seasons, and subsequently went on to teach art history courses at universities in New York City.

The Andes are the world’s most complex, unexplored and biodiverse mountain range. Across an enormous variety of ecosystems, from the driest deserts to some of the wettest forests, 10% of the world’s plant species are found in these mountains, and many more are still to be discovered. For centuries, explorers, researchers and artists have felt fascination for these mountains, which still guard countless mysteries and are a continuous source of inspiration. The Heart of the Andes, by Frederic E. Church (1826–1900), is an exquisite representation of the biological richness of these breathtaking landscapes, inviting curious eyes to explore every inch of this fabulous painting. During this virtual webinar, Dr. Mauricio Diazgranados guided viewers through a journey traversing Church’s painting, sharing his photographs, adventures, and knowledge with over 30 years’ experience hiking and exploring the flora of these mountains.

Dr. Mauricio Diazgranados leads the strategic positioning and planning for Science at New York Botanical Garden. He directs and oversees the activities of the various components of the International Plant Science Center (IPSC), including the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium; the Institute of Economic Botany; the Institute of Systematic Botany and the Graduate Studies program, among others. In his previous position (2016–2023), Dr. Diazgranados was a Research Leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and led the Nature-based Solutions Initiative, aiming to provide solutions to address environmental and societal challenges for the benefit of both society and nature. Before that, he served as Director for Science at the Bogotá Botanical Garden (Colombia). Dr. Diazgranados has more than twenty years of teaching experience, has published numerous papers, books, and extinction risk assessments for plants. His research develops plant and fungal diversity approaches to support communities in locations and economies where nutritional, income and biodiversity issues are of paramount importance. His projects focus on studying utilized, neglected and under-utilized plants, their main threats and conservation status, and their sustainable use, primarily in the Tropics.

The noted painter Charles Ethan Porter (1847–1923), was born in Connecticut and at times maintained a studio in Frederic Church’s hometown of Hartford where he exhibited locally. He became associated with the area and was described in local newspapers as “the Hartford artist.” During this virtual webinar, learn more about Porter’s accomplished still life and landscape paintings that were collected by prominent figures like Church and Mark Twain. Join curator Erin Monroe as she examines the challenges Porter faced navigating racial inequality and prejudices as a Black artist working in the post-Civil War era. Combining new research and archival resources, this presentation will explore Porter’s life and legacy in Hartford and connect his story to a wide range of topics, from changing American taste to the abolitionist movement.

Erin Monroe is the Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. She has led the department since 2016 and oversees an extensive collection encompassing colonial portraiture, nineteenth-century landscapes, neoclassical sculpture, modernism/surrealism, and mid-century abstraction. Drawing upon the strengths of the museum’s holdings, she has curated Andrew Wyeth: Looking Beyond; Gorey’s Worlds; and Paul Manship: Ancient Made Modern, the first museum exhibition on the artist in thirty years. She served as the in-house curator for Milton Avery, organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, and Frederic Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage, organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts. Monroe holds an M.A. in art history from Hunter College (CUNY), and obtained a B.A. in art history from Northwestern University, with a minor in African studies.

Learn more about what inspired Frederic Church’s “Great Picture”. During this presentation, senior research scholar at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Kevin Avery explores the context and legacy of Church’s Heart of the Andes. By tracing Church’s travels south, Dr. Avery highlights the influence Alexander von Humboldt made on this great work. Tune in and gain a deeper understanding of how vital the Prussian naturalist’s scientific treatises were to the development of Church’s popular painting. This webinar is presented in conjunction with SPECTACLE: Frederic Church and the Business of Art.

KEVIN J. AVERY is a senior research scholar at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was an assistant and as associate curator in the American Wing from 1988 to 2008. Dr. Avery received his B.A. in art history from Fordham University and his M.A. and PhD. degrees from Columbia University, where he wrote his dissertation on the panorama and its manifestations in American landscape painting. Among the exhibitions he has organized and the catalogues he has authored or co-authored are Church’s Great Picture, The Heart of the Andes (1993); American Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume 1 (2002); Hudson River School Visions: the Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford; and Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church.

One of America’s most renowned landscapists, the New England-born Frederic Church, based his large-scale Heart of the Andes (1859) on his two trips to South America in 1853 and 1857. After the 5 x 10 ft. canvas left the artist’s studio, it went on a single-picture exhibition tour from 1859 to 1861, during which it was arguably seen by more people than any other painting of its day. Church’s pay-per-view audiences came away sure they had enjoyed an authentic glimpse of the tropical landscape of South America that so inspired the artist. And he made a tidy profit in the process.

During this presentation, Katherine Manthorne will explore Church’s savvy in media and fine art that he deployed to plan his travels, and paint and market his “great picture” Heart of the Andes to a 19th Century audience. 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 which he later helped found.

Katherine Manthorne is an art historian at the Graduate Center, City University of New York committed to the study of the art of the Americas (1800-1940) in its hemispheric dimensions. Landscape imagery is a special passion, embodied in publications like Tropical Renaissance: North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839-1879 (1989) and Traveler Artists: Landscapes of Latin America from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection (2015). Women’s contributions to visual culture constitutes another theme in her work featured in two books: Women in the Dark: American Female Photographers 1850-1900 (2020) and Restless Enterprise: The Art and Life of Eliza Pratt Greatorex (2020). Dr. Manthorne received fellowships from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Fulbright and Smithsonian Institution.

American landscape painter Frederic Church is known for his vibrant sunsets and glorious daytime skies. Church’s paintings of night skies highlight the artist’s lifelong fascination with the intersection of art and science, focusing on breathtaking atmospheric phenomena. The artist made a point of scientific accuracy in his paintings, and took particular interest in meteorological events. 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 Church’s painting, The Meteor of 1860, in which the artist took a significant current event and invested it with both scientific and political meaning.

Eleanor Jones Harvey is Senior Curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a leading authority on American landscape painting, and champion of American Art at the national level. Her most recent exhibition, Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, dives into famed Prussian explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt through the work of American artists such as Frederic Church.