"Thomas Cole: An American Visionary" Exhibition Opening Conversation with Alan Wallach, Ph.D., and Nancy Siegel, Ph.D.

Saturday, April 25th; 1-2pm

Join distinguished art historians and Hudson River School experts, Alan Wallach and Nancy Siegel, for an Opening Conversation exploring Thomas Cole’s lasting legacy and significant influence on American art, marking the nation’s 250th anniversary.
This program celebrates the opening of the new Richard Sharp Gallery and the exhibition Thomas Cole: An American Visionary.

Alan Wallach has spent over fifty years studying, writing about, and teaching Thomas Cole, the Hudson River School, and American art, including artists like Augustus St-Gaudens, Grant Wood, and Norman Rockwell. He is the author of Trouble in Paradise: Twenty Four Essays on the Social History of Art (2024/2026) and has taught at institutions including Stanford, and UCLA. In 2007, he received the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art History award.

Nancy Siegel, Professor of Art History and Assistant Dean at Towson University, specializes in American landscapes, 19th-century women artists, print culture, and culinary history. She co-curated Women Reframe American Landscape (2023) at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and authored Susie M. Barstow: Redefining the Hudson River School. Siegel lectures widely, conducts historical cooking demonstrations, and serves as a culinary consultant. Her upcoming work includes Political Appetites: The Power of Food in Revolutionary America and “We Are Still in Eden”: A Hudson River School Reader (2027).