Painting History in the United States Capitol Rotunda
Advance registration is required.
This is event is being held online. After registering, connection information will be emailed to you.
Come enjoy discussions and lectures with PAFA scholars covering a variety of topics related to PAFA’s exhibitions, collections, and areas of interest. Now you can enjoy these lectures from the comfort of your couch. Join us each Wednesday at noon and now you can even bring your lunch!
Many people today do not tend to think of artists actively shaping our nation’s history, but that is exactly what Philadelphia artist Peter F. Rothermel (1812-1895) and his contemporaries – including Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868), John Gadsby Chapman (1808-1889), William Henry Powell (1823-1879), Robert Walter Weir (1803-1889), and John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) - were attempting to do in securing and executing paintings for the Rotunda from the 1830s-1850s. In our 21st century moment when much of the country is examining it’s troubling and contentious shared artistic past, these pivotal, yet under-studied decades of antebellum American art history urgently merit sustained examination and analysis.