Calendar of Events

"Art, War, and Identity" with Dr. Robin Frank

April 6, 2025 · 3 p.m.
Garden House

Art historian Dr. Robin Jaffee Frank will explore how the persuasive power of artists during the revolutionary era helped sway public opinion and forge our national identity. An in-person program at KTM&HC's Garden House.

Robin will discuss a variety of artistic impacts that occurred during and immediately after the Revolutionary War: a popular print by Paul Revere that helped justify rebellion; engravings that revealed the deadly scourge of smallpox; portraits by Ralph Earl and John Singleton Copley that captured the character of individuals and the new nation; paintings by artists like John Vanderlyn that intertwined revolutionary ideals of “all men are created equal” with conflicting and poisonous prejudices about race; and a series of paintings by John Trumbull that paved the way for peace by depicting honorable behavior on both sides of the conflict.

Robin's presentation will be followed by Q&A. Registration is required and tickets will be on sale soon.

An independent curator, Dr. Robin Jaffee Frank has organized numerous exhibitions at museums throughout the US, lectured extensively, and published widely on American visual culture from the colonial through contemporary periods. She formerly served as Chief Curator and Curator of American Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford; Senior Associate Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven; and Guest Curator at the New-York Historical Society. Robin holds a PhD in the history of art from Yale University.

Robin explored the idea of America in an interdisciplinary context as contributing author to Becoming America: Highlights from the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection(Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and Yale University Press, 2020); guest curator forWorld War I Beyond the Trenches (New-York Historical Society, 2017); curator and author of Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland (Yale University Press, 2015); and co-curator and contributing author to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery (Yale University Press, 2008).

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