Description
Falmouth Art Center’s Art Talk Series
4 Talks in March, April & May!
Falmouth Art Center Member price: $10 per talk or all 4 talks for $30
Non-member price: $15 per talk or all 4 talks for $50
Purchase tickets online or by phone at 508-540-3304
Talk #1: “Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism”
Talk by Sebastian Smee, author & art critic
Thursday, March 27 at 4:00pm
in person at the Falmouth Art Center
Sebastian Smee will talk about his new book, Paris in Ruins: Love, War and the Birth of Impressionism which tells the story of the Impressionist movement during the Franco-Prussian War. From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the “Terrible Year” by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans―then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris. As renowned art critic Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist movement was born―in response to violence, civil war, and political intrigue.
Sebastian Smee is an art critic for the Washington Post. He was previously the chief art critic at the Boston Globe, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2011. He has also written for the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, The Times, FT, Prospect Magazine and Spectator. He is the author of The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art and has contributed to a number of books on Lucian Freud.
Talk #2: Hans Hofmann’s Push Pull Theory and its Impact on Modern Art
Lecture and Demonstration by Laura Shabott, artist & educator
Thursday April 17th at 4pm
in person at the Falmouth Art Center
Hans Hofmann, a seminal Provincetown artist and teacher from 1938 to 1957, taught two generations of abstract and figurative expressionists. In this lecture, you will see how select Hofmann students – Robert Henry, Selina Trieff, Robert De Niro, Lee Krasner and Paul Resika – applied their teacher’s theory of pushing and pulling color, shape and line on a two dimensional surface. Next, artist Laura Shabott, while working from a still life, will demonstrate how this principle of abstraction comes to life. Attending artists and art lovers can ask questions, express their own beliefs about art history, and leave with a greater understanding and excitement for painting and paintings. Provincetown artist and art educator Laura Shabott will give this talk. Ms. Shabott will also give a painting demonstration using Hofmann’s famous push/pull philosophy as part of the talk.
Laura Shabott is a graduate of School of Museum of Fine Arts at TUFTS with multiple Returning Residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), Provincetown. Her paintings, drawings and collages evoke a love for life and art-making through gesture, shape, and composition. She is also an art educator and lecturer with a passion for the Provincetown’s art history. Her interest in the work of Hans Hofmann began as an assistant at Berta Walker Gallery the years ago and in her studies with artist Robert Henry. Shabott will have a solo show, YOU ONLY GET THIS BODY ONCE, of her figurative expressive large scale paintings and drawings at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Massachusetts, October 2025. She is represented by Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown with art collected nationwide and in the permanent collection of PAAM.
Talk #3: Lois Mailou Jones & the Little Paris Group
Talk & Virtual Gallery Tour by Micah Koppl, museum educator
Thursday, May 8, 3:00 pm on Zoom
This virtual Collections Talk & Tour by Micah Koppl of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC explores the work of the acclaimed artist Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998) and her artistic circle known as the Little Paris Group. The museum has several works in its collection by Lois Mailou Jones, as well as works by members of her circle, including Elizabeth Catlett, Céline Tabary, and Alma Woodsey Thomas.
Micah Koppl is a movement artist, filmmaker, and museum educator living in Washington D.C. They hold a BFA in Dance + Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. Micah is currently the Education Assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Recently, they were the Lead Guide at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arts + Industries Building. Their work as a museum educator began at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, where they were the Lead Tour Guide and Evaluation Assistant.
Talk #4: Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity
Talk by Laura Katzman, curator
Thursday, May 29 at 4:00 pm on Zoom
Laura Katzman will speak about the exhibit Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity (on display May 23-October 12, 2025 at the Jewish Museum in New York). The exhibit examines the pioneering, multifaceted art of social realist Ben Shahn (1898-1969). It highlights Shahn’s continued, global relevance by focusing on his commitment to social justice through a contemporary lens.
Laura Katzman earned her PhD in art history from Yale University. Since 2007 she has been a professor of art history at James Madison University; in 2018-2019 she served as the Terra Foundation Visting Professor of American Art at the Free University Berlin. An internationally recognized scholar of twentieth-century art and documentary photography in the continental United States and in Puerto Rico, she is co-author of the award-winning Ben Shahn’s New York: The Photography of Modern Times (2000); principal author of Re-viewing Documentary: The Photographic Life of Louise Rosskam (2014); and editor of The Museum of the Old Colony: An Art Installation by Pablo Delano (2023). Professor Katzman was guest curator of Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity, the widely-acclaimed retrospective exhibition hosted by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (2023-2024), which she has adapted for the Jewish Museum in New York. The exhibition, the first career-spanning retrospective of Shahn’s art in the United States in nearly 50 years, will be accompanied by a second edition of the catalogue published by Princeton University Press. It opens May 23rd and runs through October 12, 2025.
A Major Thank you to our Sponsor:
Burton & Burton of Sotheby’s International Realty
for making this speaker program possible.
