Was the Medium the Message? American Artists Rediscover Pastel at the Turn of the 20th Century

• Art/Photo
• Free

In 1910, New York saw the birth of a new exhibition society, the “Pastellists,” organized by George Bellows, Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, and Everett Shinn. Rising on the ashes of an older group, led by William Merritt Chase, that intermittently exhibited between 1885 and 1889, the new club presented four exhibitions between 1911 and 1914 and then disappeared. Why pastel again, at just this moment? This lecture will look at the work of the founders, exploring the sources of their interest and the special appeal of this sensuous medium to American artists at the dawn of modernism.

Kathleen A. Foster is the Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art and director of the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Recently, her scholarship has focused on the work of Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, and the American watercolor movement, from 1860 to 1925.

This is a special program presented free of charge by the Sansom Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports numerous causes. Since 2001, the Foundation has held a series of scholarly lectures to celebrate and commemorate the leadership of the late C. Richard Hilker, its past President.