In this virtual talk, Caroline Fowler will discuss the ways in which the development of trans-Atlantic slave trade was formative to the history of Dutch painting, and its reception. While Dutch painting is often heralded for its descriptive qualities of everyday middle-class existence in the burgeoning Dutch Republic, Fowler will consider the ways in which these tropes around freedom, description and the middle class are imbricated within a larger history of slavery and the plantation economy.

This presentation will be presented entirely online via a link sent after registration. 

Caroline Fowler is Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute, and a lecturer at Williams College. Her most recent books include, The Art of Paper: From the Holy Land to the Americas and Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art. She occasionally hosts the podcast In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing, and co-edits a book series of conservation and art history, Art/Work.

$8 General Access

$5 Discounted Access (For HHS members, seniors, students, active military personnel and their families, and veterans.)

Image Credit: Rembrandt van Rijn, Two Men of African Descent, 1661. Oil on canvas (Mauritshuis, The Hague).

This program is sponsored by Conscious Energy Inc. and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.