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 weeklong ramble in the High Sierra, to find two painters awaiting him, eager for a guide who 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 also consider how their visions of the West reinforced ideas of the frontier that tempted and excited Americans in the East.

Ben Tilghman is the Nancy Underwood Associate Professor of Art History at Washington College. 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 Hubble Space Telescope imagery. 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 that examine past depictions of the natural world to better understand our relationship with it today. 

*Space is limited, so please register early!