Events

Join William L. Coleman, inaugural Wyeth Foundation Director of the Wyeth Study Center, for a discussion on Thomas Cole and American Wilderness. Among Thomas Cole’s lasting legacies for American culture, still palpable as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, is his passionate advocacy in paint and prose for the concept of wilderness. The notion that old-growth forests and mountains had an inherent value apart from that of their extractable natural resources was an iconoclastic and unpopular stance among Euro-Americans for much of Cole’s career, and even some of his most devoted artist followers like Jasper Francis Cropsey departed from their hero’s environmental convictions in favor of convenient industrial boosterism. This talk reflects on Cole’s advocacy for wild nature in the context of his time and in dialogue with the work of his followers, clarifying in the process just how individual was his path.