HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

Some Old Curiosity Shops: Whistler, Streetscapes, Urban Change

David Curry, 2020–21 Senior Fellow at the Colby Museum’s Lunder Institute for American Art

(Reception 1 - 1:30 pm)

Highly detailed, narrative pictures were the norm when James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) exercised a seductive economy of means to depict small, independent commercial venues during the second half of his career. His most accomplished shop-front pictures feature strict geometries, suppressed detail, flattened spaces, and close cropping. Not surprisingly, these influential works are counted among the artist’s most formally advanced compositions. Dr. Curry’s talk considers why so determined a modernist addressed the past rather than the present when it came to the urban scene, not only in London, but also in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and elsewhere.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)