What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?

After reading the wonderful catalog, I am looking forward to seeing Virginia Arcadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I’ve always been so enchanted by the site itself, and it is so interesting to consider what a deep impact that landscape had on the course of 19th-century art. It also includes one of the Chrysler’s best early landscape paintings by Jacob Caleb Ward, and I look forward to seeing it in this rich and fuller context. 

What are you reading?

I have been rereading David Esterly’s The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making. It is a fascinating history of the 17th-century sculptor Grinling Gibbons, and a compelling account of Esterly’s restoration of the sculptor’s work at Hampton Court Palace. But it is also a book about slowing down, looking closely and moving deliberately, which are all skills that I’ve been trying to cultivate more over the past year of the pandemic.  

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.

I haven’t been able to travel over the past year, but I have been enjoying a lot of the really great digital programming museums have been developing. One of my favorite sites, which debuted just in time for quarantine, has been the Smithsonian Open Access platform, which makes millions of images from its collection available. It’s a great tool for research, but I also find myself just clicking through and wandering from object to object across museums and collections. I also love seeing the way that scholars and artists have made use of the images and data.

What are you researching at the moment?

I am currently researching Thomas Cole’s painting The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds in the Chrysler’s collection. It is Cole’s largest canvas and was created at a pivotal point in his career after his first European sojourn. Our conservation team is about to embark on a major yearlong restoration project of the painting, which promises to reveal some interesting new insights into the work and its significance within Cole’s career. 

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?

One of the biggest challenges facing our community (and globally) is sea level rise and the effects of climate change. I would love to create an exhibition that examines the historical roots of Americans’ patterns of settlement, use and exploitation of our coastlines. So many great American artists, from Thomas Eakins to Martin Johnson Heade, have explored how humans interacted with tidal landscapes in the 19th century. These works offer insights into what makes these sites so special, but also how they became so threatened, and perhaps how we might shift our society to protect them. —

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