Image: New Britain Museum of American Art
A lecture titled ‘From the Ancient to Avant-Garde: The Art of Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina,’ with Lisa Hayes Williams, is scheduled for Thursday, October 8, 2026, at 5:30 p.m.
The lecture considers the distinctions between Nevelson and Slobodkina, whose divergent approaches to art-making—one looking backward to the past and the other looking forward—shaped their work and identities. Both artists regarded abstraction as the most authentic expression of their era, while neither adhered to a single twentieth-century avant-garde school; instead, both assimilated and contributed to developments in Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivism and assemblage from the beginnings of their careers in the 1930s and thereafter.
Nevelson looked back in time and history for inspiration through her preoccupation with precolonial civilizations and architectural forms, as well as recurring references to ‘ancient’ and ‘antique’ subjects. She also used salvaged wood for nearly her entire career, viewing the material as something that embodied ‘past lives.’
Slobodkina, by contrast, was fascinated by mechanics, industry and technology, including commercially produced materials encountered in her daily life and work. The lecture connects that interest to humankind’s ‘journey into the future,’ a phrase intimated by the title of one of her 1978 works.
In the work of both artists, abstraction constituted a language capable of expressing complex ideas across human civilization. Their commitment to abstraction developed in New York City during an era dominated by representational art, American Scene painting and Urban Realism, making their decision to advance it especially bold for emerging women artists. Williams is Curator and Head of Exhibitions at the New Britain Museum of American Art, where she has served for more than a decade.
