Friday, February 26th, 2027 at 6:00PM
Free and open to the public!

One fine day in the early 1870s, John Muir returned home exhausted from a week-long ramble in the High Sierra to find two painters awaiting him, eager for a guide that might take them into the mountains. Muir, tired though he was, immediately obliged. This lecture will explore the ways that John Muir and other preservationists enlisted landscape artists to champion the protection of extraordinary places in the American West. At the same time, it will consider how their visions of the West reinforced ideas of the frontier that appealed to and excited Americans in the East.

Ben Tilghman is the Nancy Underwood associate professor of art history at Washington College. His research has focused primarily on medieval manuscripts, particularly the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, but he has also published on Renaissance and Islamic art. His current research explores eco-critical approaches to art history, which consider how the natural world has been depicted in the past to better understand our relationship with it in the present. He also serves as Chair of the Chestertown Public Arts Committee and previously worked at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where he curated exhibitions of illuminated manuscripts, tiny art, and images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

*Space is limited, so please register early!
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