Friday, July 15 @ 12pm
Location: Sheldon Museum Barn
Seating is limited; first come, first serve
We are delighted to offer this program in partnership with Little Seed Coffee. We encourage you to support our community partner by purchasing a beverage from them to enjoy during the program.
A box from Titian Peale’s butterfly and moth collection
Why have so many artists, from the early nineteenth century to today, been drawn to butterflies and moths? Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885) created hundreds of sketches and oil paintings of the insects, and his elaborate specimen boxes display butterflies arranged in dazzling patterns between panes of glass. Painter Willard Metcalf spent his evenings catching moths with a lantern, saving his specimens in plaster-and-glass mounts that he stored within the drawers of his natural history cabinet. Contemporary artist Margarita Cabrera hand-crafts copper monarch butterflies, evoking migrations and exchanges between the U.S. and Mexico. This talk explores artists' pursuit of butterflies and their experimentations with representations that capture not just their intricate wing patterns but their symbolic associations as well.
Ellery Foutch is an Associate Professor in the American Studies program at Middlebury College, where she teaches classes on the art and material culture of the United States. After earning her PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania, she held postdoctoral teaching fellowships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and The Courtauld Institute of Art (London). She completed her MA at the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and her BA at Wellesley College.