On the second Wednesday of every month, the mind of the American traveling artist is dissected at the LSU Museum of Art.
Museum Curator Katie Pfohl is presenting a new lecture series titled, “Around the World at Lunch: American Artist-Travelers Abroad.” The lecture series covers the works of six artists and takes place over the course of six months.
Each lecture showcases the paintings of a different American artist, mostly working in the late 19th or early 20th centuries.
Each artist’s work is talked about as a whole, but with special emphasis on works that highlight a certain location the artist travelled to.
“Students who are interested in travel or thinking about studying abroad have an opportunity here to learn about how other Americans have seen the experience of traveling,” Pfohl said.
The first lecture was last month, featuring Henry Ossawa Tanner’s landscape paintings of Paris.
The next lecture will take place on Oct. 8, and it will explore Martin Johnson Heade’s paintings of South America at the turn of the 20th century.
The aim of the series is to discuss the experience of Americans who travel to different parts of the world and depict what they see, but also to explore the contexts and whole stories the paintings help to tell.
“Part of the purpose of the series is not only to look at the pretty parts of traveling, but to explore the complicated aspects of how American travel has impacted the world,” Pfohl said. “It’s as much about traveling as it is about thinking about the way we travel.”
For example, Heade’s works show depictions of South American wildlife, but not the impact of the heavy influence of industrialization present there.
“With Heades, you get beautiful close-up images of flowers and birds but not the whole picture. He was sponsored by companies who were changing the landscape of the rainforest through logging and such, so he didn’t show any of their negative influence in his paintings,” Pfohl said. “That’s something we want to talk about.”
Next month’s lecture will feature Frederic Edwin Church’s depictions of the Middle East, while December’s will feature John La Farge in Japan.
January‘s lecture will feature James McNeill Whistler in Venice. The final lecture in February will also look at Venice, through the photographs of contemporary Louisiana Photographer Sandra Russell Clarke.
The lecture series takes place in the third floor conference room of the Shaw Center, which is at 100 Lafayette Street in downtown Baton Rouge.
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The lectures take place from noon to 1 p.m. on the second Wednesday of every month. Tickets are free for LSU students, $10 for the general public.