Carol Clark

People have a chance to explore new ways of viewing and thinking about western art at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody.

On Saturday, June 18, from 10–11:30 a.m., the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Whitney Western Art Museum hosts art historian Carol Clark, PhD, for a free, illustrated talk. The lecture is preceded by light refreshments.

Clark presents Rethinking Western American Art, which explores the legacy of Peter Hassrick as a historian of western American art and offers new ways to see American art through a western lens. To do this, she’ll propose readings of three recently discovered paintings by Charles Deas, one of which was last seen publicly in 1848.

While the talk is free and open to the public, the center asks all who wish to attend to RSVP by emailing curators@centerofthewest.org.

Hassrick, a former executive director and director emeritus of the Center of the West, was one of America’s foremost scholar-authors on Western American art. This event is made possible by the Peter Hassrick Public Program Fund, which perpetuates Hassrick’s passion for innovative and creative public programming through the Whitney Western Art Museum.

About the speaker

Carol Clark is the William McCall Vickery 1957 Professor of the History of Art and American Studies, Emerita, at Amherst College. She taught courses that addressed the art of the United States, with a focus on the 19th century and on public art, and co-taught a seminar on museums and society.

She earned a bachelor of arts degree in history and a master’s degree in the history of art from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in the history of art from Case Western Reserve University. Before coming to Amherst in 1987, Clark was Prendergast Executive Fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art, taught in the graduate art history program at Williams, and served as curator of paintings at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Clark’s most recent book, which won the Western History Association’s 2011 Joan Paterson Kerr Award, is “Charles Deas and 1840s America” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), published in conjunction with an exhibition she organized for the Denver Art Museum (August – November 2010).

Clark’s talk is the first of three in the Peter Hassrick Public Program Series. Future events include An Evening with Stephen Hannock on Aug. 11, and Charlie Russell and the Silver Screen on Sept. 22. The September installment is this year’s Buffalo Bill Art Show Lunch & Lecture program.

Keep up with the many happenings at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West at centerofthewest.org/events.