For Immediate Release
March 25, 2024

CLARK ART INSTITUTE RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PROGRAM PRESENTS LECTURE EXAMINING RACE AND THE IDEALIZED IMAGE OF THE WILDERNESS 

Williamstown, Massachusetts—On Tuesday, April 23 at 5:30 pm, the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program presents a lecture by writer Daegan Miller examining the complex history of race and the idealized image of the wilderness of the nineteenth-century Adirondacks. The talk takes place in the Clark’s auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center.

The wilderness often conjures images of vast, untouched-by-human expanses of forest––an idealized image of how nature should be. Yet humans have always lived in the woods, and this idealized image of nature erases its complex history. This talk returns to the nineteenth-century Adirondacks, where Black settlers established an anti-racist, socialist community in the years before the Civil War, and to works by Thomas Cole. Miller argues that the era establishes a nuanced, social vision of the wilderness that helps us rethink our twentieth-century place in the world.

Daegan Miller is an essayist and critic whose writing investigates what it means to inhabit a landscape. He is the author of This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent and received his PhD in cultural and environmental history from Cornell University. His essays and criticism have appeared in a wide range of venues, including The Yale Review, Emergence, Places Journal, Guernica, Slate, and the North American Review. He lives with his family in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A reception at 5 pm in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event. For more information, visit clarkart.edu/events. 

The next Research and Academic Program lecture is presented by Igor Simões (State University of Rio Grande do Sul / Clark Fellow), who explores the absence of Black Brazilian artists in the context of the international debate on art and the history of Afrodiasporic art. The event takes place on Tuesday, April 30 at 5:30 pm in the Clark’s auditorium.

ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, consisting of more than 285,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

The Clark, which has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide, is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Its 140-acre campus includes miles of hiking and walking trails through woodlands and meadows, providing an exceptional experience of art in nature. Galleries are open 10 am to 5 pm Tuesday through Sunday, from September through June, and daily in July and August. Admission is free January through March and is $20 from March through December; admission is free year-round for Clark members, all visitors age 21 and under, and students with a valid student ID. Free admission is also available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; and EBT Card to Culture. For information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

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