At Home and Abroad: New England Women, Travel, and the Shaping of Artistic Expression, 1840-1910 March 10, 2012

A one-day symposium exploring the influence of travel and study abroad on New England women painters, sculptors, photographers, and collectors during the second half of the nineteenth century.

New England women from both elite and modest backgrounds increasingly traveled outside the United States as tourists to escape social constraints, and to gain the artistic training largely denied them at home. Upon their return, these women brought with them a new perspective on their surroundings, their social milieu, and themselves. While Isabella Stewart Gardner most famously built her Venetian palazzo on the Fenway, other women built studios, salons, and social networks that supported their artistic pursuits. Their paintings, photography, sculptures, interiors, collecting activities, and landscape designs all reflect their extended stays in foreign cities and artists’ colonies.

Sponsored by the Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College and the Office of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield, and made possible by the generous support of the Barra Foundation.