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Lectures are held in Kaufman Theater at 11 a.m., with refreshments served in Huber Court at 10:30 a.m.
Through the generous support of our members, the Norfolk Society of Arts offered world-class lectures to the vibrant Hampton Roads community that are free and open to the public. The NSA’s free lecture series was established in the 1950s and continues to bring notable curators, historians, architects, journalists, professors, and others to the Chrysler Museum of Art. Consider becoming a member today.
On April 15, 1874, an exhibition organized by the “Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, etc.” opened in Paris at the studio of the photographer Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines. One of the exhibition reviewers coined the term by which the group would come to be known: “impressionist.” Although it only lasted a month, the first impressionist exhibition remains a key moment in the history of Western painting, taking on an almost mythical status with the passage of time.
Marking the 150th anniversary of the first impressionist exhibition, the National Gallery’s Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment takes a fresh look at this seminal exhibition. Bringing together some 130 paintings, the show both reconstructs and recontextualizes the impressionist exhibition within the broader social, political, historic and aesthetic currents of this crucial year.
Mary Morton has been curator and head of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art since 2010. She previously served as associate curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum (2004-2010) and associate curator of European art at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Houston (1998-2004). She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in history, and her PhD from Brown University, concentrating on 19th and early 20th century European painting.