Curators in Conversation: Impressionism
Sunday, September 15, 2024
2:00 PM–3:00 PM
Auditorium
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Get directions to the Clark
Mary Morton, Head of the Department of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art and co-curator of the Gallery’s Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment exhibition, and Michelle Foa, Associate Professor of Art History at Tulane University and co-curator of the Clark’s Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism exhibition, join in conversation. Morton and Foa explore how their respective exhibitions (both
of which mark the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874) encourage visitors to see aspects of Impressionism in a new light. They also discuss the state of Impressionist studies today.
Mary Morton serves as Head of the Department of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art and is the co-curator of the Gallery’s Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment exhibition. She received her bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University, and her PhD from Brown University, concentrating on nineteenth and early twentieth century European painting. Morton began her curatorial career in the European art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and then worked as associate curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Her exhibition projects prior to arriving at the National Gallery of Art include Courbet and the Modern Landscape (2006), Oudry's Painted Menagerie (2007), and The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (2010). At the National Gallery, she organized the presentation of Gauguin: Maker of Myth (2011), a reinstallation of the Gallery’s renowned nineteenth century collection (2012); Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye (2015), Cézanne Portraits (2017–18), Corot Women (2018) True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870 (2020) and Paris 1874: the Impressionist Moment (2024). In 2018, the French government awarded her Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Michelle Foa serves as Associate Professor of Art History at Tulane University and is the co-curator of the Clark's Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism exhibition. Her first book, Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision, was published by Yale University Press in 2015. Her second book, Edgar Degas and the Matter of Art, is under advance contract with Yale, and part of this research published in The Art Bulletin was awarded the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Article Prize in 2022. Her research and teaching have been supported by numerous fellowships and grants, including from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art (where she was a Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Clark Art Institute (where she was a Florence Gould Foundation Fellow in the spring of 2024), and the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), among others. She is Vice President of the National Committee for the History of Art and on the organizing committee for the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) quadrennial conference in 2028. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art as the organization’s Program Chair.
Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524.
Image: Edgar Degas, Two Dancers Resting (detail), c. 1879, pastel and gouache on paper. Shelburne Museum, 1972.6. Photo: Bridgeman Images
Mary Morton serves as Head of the Department of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art and is the co-curator of the Gallery’s Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment exhibition. She received her bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University, and her PhD from Brown University, concentrating on nineteenth and early twentieth century European painting. Morton began her curatorial career in the European art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and then worked as associate curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Her exhibition projects prior to arriving at the National Gallery of Art include Courbet and the Modern Landscape (2006), Oudry's Painted Menagerie (2007), and The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (2010). At the National Gallery, she organized the presentation of Gauguin: Maker of Myth (2011), a reinstallation of the Gallery’s renowned nineteenth century collection (2012); Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye (2015), Cézanne Portraits (2017–18), Corot Women (2018) True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870 (2020) and Paris 1874: the Impressionist Moment (2024). In 2018, the French government awarded her Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Michelle Foa serves as Associate Professor of Art History at Tulane University and is the co-curator of the Clark's Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism exhibition. Her first book, Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision, was published by Yale University Press in 2015. Her second book, Edgar Degas and the Matter of Art, is under advance contract with Yale, and part of this research published in The Art Bulletin was awarded the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Article Prize in 2022. Her research and teaching have been supported by numerous fellowships and grants, including from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art (where she was a Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Clark Art Institute (where she was a Florence Gould Foundation Fellow in the spring of 2024), and the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), among others. She is Vice President of the National Committee for the History of Art and on the organizing committee for the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) quadrennial conference in 2028. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art as the organization’s Program Chair.
Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524.
Image: Edgar Degas, Two Dancers Resting (detail), c. 1879, pastel and gouache on paper. Shelburne Museum, 1972.6. Photo: Bridgeman Images
