Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The program is scheduled for Sunday, October 25, 2026, from 2 to 3:30 pm at The Met Fifth Avenue’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.
The afternoon will feature presentations and conversation by scholars to mark Frederic Edwin Church’s 200th birthday, celebrating Church as one of America’s most well-known landscape painters of the 19th century.
Participants are Siobhan Angus, assistant professor of Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University; Christian Ayne Crouch, dean of Graduate Studies, professor of History and American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College; Joseph Mizhakiiyaasige Zordan, a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University; and Caroline Gillaspie, assistant curator of American Painting and Drawing in The American Wing at The Met.
Immersed in the natural world, Church looked to contemporary scientific and environmental thinking as he depicted observations from his travels in North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East.
The discussion will reflect on Church’s legacy and explore how 19th-century American landscape paintings are interpreted in the present moment. This program coincides with Olana State Historic Site’s Frederich Church 200 celebration. An image identified with the program is Frederic Edwin Church’s ‘Heart of the Andes (detail),’ 1859, an oil on canvas.
