Washington College, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery Present Third Annual "American Pictures" Series

Bus Transportation Available from Chestertown

A trio of Pulitzer Prize-winning authors are set for the 2010 “American Pictures” series. Civil War historian James M. McPherson; cartoonist, author and illustrator Jules Feiffer; and cultural historian David Hackett Fischer will bring their unique perspectives to three iconic images in this spring's series.

The “American Pictures” series - a joint program of Washington College, the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum - offers a highly original approach to art, pairing great works with leading figures of contemporary American culture. Each talk features an eminent writer, artist, critic or historian who chooses a single, powerful image and investigates its meanings, revealing how artworks reflect American identity and inspire creativity in many different fields. The series director is historian and essayist Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College.

The series begins Saturday, April 10, when James McPherson will speak on Alexander Gardner’s photograph “Confederate Dead by a Fence on the Hagerstown Road, Antietam” (1862), which the speaker will use to explore the experiences of ordinary soldiers in the Civil War. McPherson, a renowned expert on the Civil War, won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom, which is widely acclaimed as the best single-volume history of the Civil War ever published.

Saturday, April 17, will bring us Jules Feiffer, the well-loved cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, and children’s book author and illustrator. Feiffer will explore Bob Landry’s visually thrilling photograph “Fred Astaire in ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz,’” (1945), and draw on his forthcoming autobiography to discuss his life’s work as an artist in many different media. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1986 and an Academy Award for his animated short, Munro, in 1961.

The series will conclude on Saturday, May 1, when David Hackett Fischer will take a close look at Emanuel Leutze’s famous “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851), a painting that helped inspire his 2005 Pulitzer-winning book, Washington’s Crossing. Fischer is among the foremost scholars of American history and culture whose books include Liberty and Freedom, Paul Revere’s Ride and Champlain’s Dream.

"The idea behind “American Pictures” is to have some of the most brilliant thinkers and writers and creators of the present day step inside some of the most powerful images from the past," said Goodheart, the series director. "The most exciting thing is that each talk is, in effect, a brand-new work that premieres here for the first time."

This is the third year for the “American Pictures” series which has drawn large audiences for such speakers as art-rock pioneer Laurie Anderson, historian Garry Wills, actress/playwright Anna Deavere Smith, and filmmaker John Waters. Support for “American Pictures” comes from the Starr Foundation, the Hodson Trust, the Hedgelawn Foundation, the Washington College Department of Art and Art History and others.

All “American Pictures” events take place at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, located at 8^th and F Streets, N.W., in Washington, D.C. These Saturday talks, held in the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium, will all begin at 4:30 p.m. Free tickets are available beginning at 3:30 p.m. at the G Street lobby information desk on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, visit www.starrcenter.washcoll.edu. The Starr center is sponsoring free buses from Chestertown to Washington for the series. Space is limited. To reserve tickets for the talks or to ask about the bus, call Lois Kitz during business hours at 410-810-7165 or send an email at lkitz2@washcoll.edu

About the Sponsors

Founded in 1782 under the personal patronage of its namesake, Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, upholds a tradition of excellence and innovation in the liberal arts. The American Pictures series is a project of the college’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and its Department of Art and Art History.

The National Portrait Gallery tells the stories of America through the individuals—poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists—who have built our national culture. It is where the arts keep us in the company of remarkable Americans.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation’s first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character and imagination of the American people from the colonial period to today.

FORMER MAGAZINE EDITOR TO TALK 'CAREERS IN JOURNALISM,' MARCH 25

CHESTERTOWN – Bob Thompson, former editor of The Washington Post Magazine, will offer a presentation on “Careers in Journalism” at Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House on Thursday, March 25, at 4:30 p.m. 

Thompson spent 24 years as an award-winning writer and editor of magazine and newspaper feature stories at the Washington Post. He wrote 20 cover stories for the Washington Post Magazine and served as its editor for six years, working with writers such as David Finkel, Steve Coll, David Maraniss, Bob Woodward, and Marjorie Williams, as well as Robert Day, Adjunct Professor at Washington College.

Mr. Thompson also wrote and edited for the Post's Style section, where from 2005 to 2009 he wrote author profiles and covered the publishing industry. Born in Seattle, Thompson grew up near Boston and graduated from Stanford University with a degree in history in 1972. He served as managing editor of three now-defunct publications before becoming a senior editor at the still-surviving Inc. Magazine in 1984. Thompson took the job at the Post in 1985. In 1992, he returned to Stanford for a year on a John S. Knight journalism fellowship.

His Post Magazine pieces ranged from a profile of legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, to a portrait of a young woman graduating from college in the year 2000, to a close look at what was then America's hottest computer game, “The Sims.” 

Thompson’s presentation is sponsored by the Maureen Jacoby Endowment for Editing and Publishing.  Admission is free and open to the public.

 

Civil Rights Attorney Sherrilyn Ifill Explores Race and the Judiciary at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN – The 2009 confirmation hearings of the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, rekindled an intense debate about the role of race in judicial decision-making. Noted civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill will explore this topic when she presents “Wise Latinas, Black Raconteurs, and White Umpires: Conceptions of Race and Judging in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, 1955-2009,” at Washington College’s Litrenta Lecture Hall on Thursday, March 18, at 7:30 p.m. 

Since 1955, when John Marshall Harlan was nominated to the Supreme Court just after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, questions about race have played a central role in Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The contention surrounding Justice Sotomayor’s nomination is only the latest chapter in a much longer story.

Ifill, one of the strongest voices advocating greater diversity on the Court, will be in residence at Washington College from March 15-19 as this year's Frederick Douglass Visiting Fellow at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law, Ifill is a nationally recognized advocate for civil rights, voting rights, and judicial diversity. She offers commentary on race and the law on CNN, NBC Nightly News, and C-Span, and is a regular op-ed contributor to the Baltimore Sun and the Afro-American.

In her current project on the judicial selection process, Ifill argues that all judges – not just minorities – are affected by their own background and life experiences, and that diversity on the bench is key to creating a Court that can wisely interpret the law. If this is true, she maintains, it follows that the popular perception of white male judges as impartial “umpires” and female and minority judges as inherently biased is fundamentally flawed.    

Prior to joining the University of Maryland faculty, Ifill litigated voting rights cases for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. An advocate of restorative justice for past racial wrongs, Ifill is the author of On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century (Beacon Books, 2007), which explores the lingering effects of lynching here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Established through a generous gift from Maurice Meslans and Margaret Holyfield of St. Louis, the annual Frederick Douglass Visiting Fellowship brings to campus an individual engaged in the study or interpretation of African-American history and related fields. Besides providing the recipient an opportunity for a week of focused writing, the fellowship also offers Washington College students exposure to some of today's leading interpreters of African-American culture. During her week in Chestertown, Ifill will speak with students and faculty about her research, and her experiences with restorative justice processes.

Litrenta Lecture Hall is located in the John S. Toll Science Center. Ifill’s talk, which is co-sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Black Studies Program, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Pre-Law Program, is free and open to the public.

 

About the Starr Center

The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience explores our nation’s history – and particularly the legacy of its Founding era – in innovative ways. Through educational programs, scholarship, and public outreach, and especially by supporting and fostering the art of written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between past and present, and between the academic world and the public at large. From its base in the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown’s colonial waterfront, the Center also serves as a portal onto a world of opportunities for Washington College students. Its guiding principle is that now more than ever, a wider understanding of our shared past is fundamental to the continuing success of America’s democratic experiment. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

 

Washington College Announces $50,000 George Washington Book Prize Finalists

In commemoration of George Washington’s birthday, Washington College today announced three finalists for the 2010 George Washington Book Prize.

The books, which were chosen from 62 entries, include a masterful account of the Constitutional Convention, an insightful reconsideration of the Founding Fathers, and a lively and dramatic narrative of one of the most remarkable partnerships in American history.

The finalists are: Richard Beeman’s Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House), R.B. Bernstein's The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (Oxford), and Edith B Gelles’ Abigail & John: Portrait of A Marriage (William Morrow).


The $50,000 award—co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon—is the largest prize nationwide for a book on early American history, and one of the largest literary prizes of any kind. It recognizes the year’s best books on the nation’s founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history.

“Each of this year’s finalists tells the stories of some of the men and women who participated in the nation’s founding,” said Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold director of Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, which administers the prize. “These books are not simple biographies: they are group portraits that bring to life, in personal and immediate ways, an extraordinary era in American history.”

The winner will be announced at a gala celebration May 20 at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens in Virginia.

The finalists were selected by a jury of three distinguished historians: Theodore J. Crackel, Editor in Chief, The Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia, who served as chair; Catherine Allgor, Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside; and Andrew Cayton, University Distinguished Professor of History at Miami University, Ohio.

They selected the finalists after reviewing 62 books published last year on the founding period in American history, from about 1760 to 1820—time of the creation and consolidation of the young republic.

Richard Beeman “has long been a jewel in the historical profession’s crown,” and in Plain, Honest Men, he has written what could be considered his “magnum opus,” the jurors wrote. They praised the book for its “clear, accessible prose” and its “willingness to engage the reader in a public conversation,” calling the work “the best modern account of the Constitutional story.” Beeman is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of several books on the revolutionary America, including Patrick Henry: A Biography (1974), a finalist for the National Book Award. He serves as a trustee and vice-chair of the Distinguished Scholars Panel of the National Constitution Center.

R.B. Bernstein’s The Founding Fathers Reconsidered “is the product of a genius for concise analysis” that in its relatively few pages “has synthesized a generation of scholarship into an extended essay about the nature and meaning of the American Revolution,” the jurors reported. “He provides a straightforward account of men who were neither demi-gods nor scoundrels, but rather talented, imperfect human beings.” Bernstein is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at New York Law School and has written, edited or co-edited nineteen books on American constitutional and legal history, including Thomas Jefferson (2003).

Edith B. Gelles’ Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage is the judges noted, “not only a lively telling of a most important chapter in our nation’s history, but also – and appropriately – a romance.” In this most recent exploration of the famous duo, Gelles “has added new dimensions, capturing the husband and wife in a truly multi-dimensional construct.” Gelles is currently a Senior Scholar at the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Studies at Stanford University. She began her research into the Adamses over thirty years ago and is the author of two books about Abigail:Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (1992), a co-winner of the American Historical Association’s Herbert Feis Award, and Abigail Adams: A Writing Life (1998), an examination of Abigail’s life through her letters.

You can read more about the George Washington Book Prize at gwprize.washcoll.edu.

The 2010 George Washington Book Prize Jurors

Theodore J. Crackel, chair of the 2010 Washington Prize jury, is Professor and Editor in Chief of The Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia. In 2005, the project received a National Humanities Medal from President Bush; in 2007 it launched a digital edition, and in 2009 it undertook the online publication of Washington’s extensive financial papers. A renowned scholar of early military history, Professor Crackel previously served as Director and Editor of Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800, at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. He was a visiting professor at West Point during the school’s bicentennial year (2001-2002). Among his books are Mr. Jefferson’s Army: Political and Social Reform of the Military Establishment, 1801-1809 (New York University Press, 1987) and West Point: A Bicentennial History (University Press of Kansas, 2002).

Catherine Allgor is a Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, where she teaches classes on early America, gender and politics. She has been awarded a prestigious Presidential Chair at the University of California. She attended Mount Holyoke College as a Frances Perkins Scholar and received her Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University, where she also won the Yale Teaching Award. Allgor began her teaching career at Simmons College and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University. Her book, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (University Press of Virginia, 2000), won the James H. Broussard First Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and she has written on politics, women and religion for national publications. Her latest book, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Henry Holt, 2006), was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize.

Andrew Cayton earned a B.A. from the University of Virginia and a M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Brown University. He has been the John Adams (Fulbright) Professor of American Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands; a Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation Center at Bellagio, Italy; and a Resident Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Jefferson’s Monticello. He is currently Distinguished Professor of History at Miami University, Ohio, where he has received several teaching awards. Cayton is currently collaborating with Fred Anderson on Imperial America, 1672-1764, a volume in the Oxford History of the United States. His previous books include The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825 (Kent State University Press, 1986), which won the Ohioana Book Award for History; Ohio: The History of a People (Ohio State University Press, 2002); and, co-authored with Fred Anderson, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (Viking, 2004). The Dominion of War was named a Washington Post Best Book of 2005.

About the Sponsors of the George Washington Book Prize

Washington College was founded in 1782, the first institution of higher learning established in the new republic. George Washington was not only a principal donor to the college, but also a member of its original governing board. He received an honorary degree from the college in June 1789, two months after assuming the presidency. The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, founded in 2000, is an innovative center for the study of history, culture and politics, and fosters excellence in the art of written history through fellowships, prizes, and student programs. www.washcoll.edu

Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a nonprofit organization supporting the study and love of American history through a wide range of programs and resources for students, teachers, scholars, and history enthusiasts throughout the nation. The Institute creates and works closely with history-focused schools; organizes summer seminars and development programs for teachers; produces print and digital publications and traveling exhibitions; hosts lectures by eminent historians; administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in every state and U.S. territory; and offers national book prizes and fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection as well as other renowned archives. Gilder Lehrman maintains two websites that serve as gateways to American history online with rich resources for educators: www.gilderlehrman.org and the quarterly online journal www.historynow.org , designed specifically for K-12 teachers and students.

Since 1860, over 80 million visitors have made George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens the most popular historic home in America. Through thought-provoking tours, entertaining events, and stimulating educational programs on the Estate and in classrooms across the nation, Mount Vernon strives to preserve George Washington's place in history as "First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen." Mount Vernon is owned and operated by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, America's oldest national preservation organization, founded in 1853. www.mountvernon.org.

Washington College 2009-2010 Concert Series Continues with Lyric Brass Quintet

Chestertown – The 58^th season of the Washington College Concert Series continues with a performance by the Lyric Brass Quintet in Decker Theatre on Saturday, February 27, at 8 p.m.

Formed in 1998, the Lyric Brass Quintet quickly distinguished itself as one of the premier brass chamber groups in the Mid-Atlantic. As winners of the 2000 Baltimore Chamber Music Competition, they performed at ARTSCAPE, and their debut CD, Daydreams, was released the same year to critical acclaim.

They have been featured artists on the Baltimore Composers’ Forum, the Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust Concert Series, and at the Foxboro Orpheum in Boston.

The Lyric Brass Quintet’s members have appeared as soloists in Eric Ewazen’s concerto grosso Shadowcatcher with the Peabody Wind Ensemble and were featured artists in Virginia’s Catch a Rising Star Concert Series.

The quintet’s second recording, Christmas Around the World, was released in December 2002, and the latest CD from the group, Ancient Noels, came out in fall 2009.

The 2009-2010 Washington College Concert Series will conclude with a performance by pianist Inna Faliks on March 28.

Single admission tickets, available at the box office, are $15 for adults, $5 for youth 18 and under. Decker Theatre is located in Washington College’s new Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts. For more information, call 410/778-7839.

Exhibition of Constance Stuart Larrabee H '96 Photographs of South Africa and WWII Opens at Washington College's Kohl Gallery

CHESTERTOWN, MD – “Looking Back: Perspectives on the Early Photography of Constance Stuart Larrabee” opens at Washington College’s Kohl Gallery on February 19^th and will be on view until March 18^th. The exhibition features 36 photos selected from the Gallery’s collection, donated by the photographer herself in 2000. View photos from the exhibition opening.

The third exhibit in the new Kohl Gallery, “Looking Back” follows the acclaimed exhibition “Second Nature: Masterpieces of Nineteenth-Century Landscape Painting” and a show of work by students from Chestertown Middle School. The exhibition will open in conjunction with George Washington’s Birthday Convocation and is the first show curated by an individual student in Kohl Gallery.

“Looking Back” is the Senior Capstone Experience of Riley Carbonneau ’10, a double major in Art and Art History and Sociology and a Kohl Gallery Intern. Under the supervision of Drs. Donald McColl in Art and Art History and Erin Anderson in Sociology, the exhibition represents a new opportunity for Art and Art History majors at the college to curate a show of their own choosing.

Remembered personally by many in the Chestertown community, Constance Stuart Larrabee (1914-2000) is internationally recognized for her work as a photographer, which began well before she settled on the Eastern Shore and established her long association with Washington College. In addition to her singular contributions to Friends of the Arts and the Department of Art, she left the College another legacy: a sizable collection of photographic prints, which are the subject of this exhibition.

Part of a project involving art-historical and sociological research and newly recorded oral histories, “Looking Back” contributes to ongoing reassessments of Larrabee’s work. Focusing on South Africa and World War II, the photos selected for this exhibition not only highlight documentary and formal qualities promoted by Larrabee herself, but also raise questions of meaning and context that make themselves apparent over time and continue to evolve with the differing perspectives on her photography.

A collaborative effort, the exhibition will feature a video, produced by Dave Wheelan and Kurt Kolaja (parent of Karly Kolaja ‘11) of The Chestertown Spy, over a recording of an NPR interview with Larrabee from August 18, 1998, as well as related photographs. In addition, Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is coordinating an oral-history project.

To accompany the exhibit, Karen Hye ’10, a double-major in Art and Art History and Psychology, interested in art therapy, will show examples of the extraordinary work she has done with AIDS patients in South Africa, part of which involved Hye’s giving said patients cameras to document their lives.

The resulting exhibition, “Defined by Four Letters,” was part of the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and received national press in South Africa,

Hye continues her work in New York, with the support of a Clarence Hoidson Prize, and upon graduation, hopes to take her work to India and China.

Gallery Hours are: Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Wednesdays through Fridays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The gallery is closed Sundays and Mondays and is free of charge.

Activist to Investigate the Calamity of Coal at Washington College

Chestertown – Cultural historian, author and activist Jeff Biggers will explore the fallacy of “clean coal” in a lecture at Washington College on Monday, February 8, at 4:30 p.m. at the Rose O’Neill Literary House located on Washington Avenue.

In his new book, RECKONING AT EAGLE CREEK: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, Biggers critiques the industry, the Big Coal lobby, and national leaders who stand at a crossroads in the energy and climate debate. “Coal is not – and never will be – clean or cheap,” he says.

Biggers – whose grandfather worked in the coal mines in southern Illinois and suffered from black lung disease – argues that we have stripped away the most troubling issues of the coal industry from our historical memory. “We have forgotten that Native Americans were removed as part of Thomas Jefferson’s national policy to mine coal, that the industry in the land of Lincoln…was launched by legal black slaves, and that strip mining unleashed environmental havoc that has wiped out families and poisoned some of the most diverse forests and waterways in America’s heartland.”

An acclaimed correspondent from the coalfields' frontlines, Jeff Biggers has been interviewed on numerous national and local television and radio programs, has served as a commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition, and is a regular contributor to Huffington Post.

The lecture, sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House and the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College, is free and open to the public.  For information, contact 410-778-7845.