Oct. 14th – William Keith: The Subjective Mystery of the California Landscape
You are invited to join us for a rare opportunity to view displayed selections from the The William Keith Collection at Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art plus several at the SF Swedenborgian Church, and listen to three scholars detail Keith’s career, his life and loves, and his influential friends John Muir, Carleton Watkins, George Inness, and a mysterious minister who was a local arbiter of artistic taste. Participate in a Q&A and panel roundtable discussion. A limited reservation event.
Donation-based tickets available now! $20 suggested.
Featured Presentations
Lauren M. MacDonald – “Windows onto Eden: William Keith’s California Paintings.”
The William Keith Collection at Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art
Lauren M. MacDonald is Dean of the Library and Academic Resources and Executive Director of the Museum of Art at Saint Mary’s College of California. The Museum of Art maintains the largest collection of William Keith paintings. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and History from Dominican University of California, a Master of Arts in Architectural History from the University of Virginia, and a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from Drexel University. Ms. MacDonald has worked as an academic librarian and held faculty positions in the history and theory of modern art and architecture. She is an Architectural Historian and has participated in historic preservation projects in the Bay Area and throughout California.
Devin Zuber – “A Thing of Vibration: Swedenborgian Synesthesia in Keith’s Late Landscapes.”
Rev. Dr. Devin Zuber, MA, MPhil is an Associate Professor of American Studies, Religion & Literature at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, and the George F. Dole Professor of Swedenborgian Studies. His last book, A Language of Things (UVA Press) received the Borsch-Rast Book Prize in 2020, and he continues to publish and teach around the intersections between religion, aesthetics, and the environment. He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at various institutions abroad, including the British Library (London), the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich), Stockholm University, and the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Tyler Green – “Keith’s Paintings After Genocide: Not Sentiment, Not Nostalgia… But What?”
Tyler Green is an award-winning historian and critic who has produced and hosted The Modern Art Notes Podcast since 2011. Green is the author of “Carleton Watkins: Making the West American,” (on the trailblazing 19th century photographer) which won a 2019 California Book Award gold medal, and Emerson’s ‘Nature’ and the Artists. The U.S. chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) awarded Green one of its two inaugural awards for art criticism in 2014. His forthcoming book is titled Claiming Yosemite: The Civil War, the California Genocide, and the Invention of National Parks, and is planned for 2025.
Ted Barrow – Moderator
Ted Barrow, Ph.D., who will be a symposium moderator, is an art historian and writer who recently completed his dissertation, “Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent in Florida” from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. In his work, he focuses on the enduring relevance of Gilded Age culture in our contemporary moment, as well as the intersections between art, architecture, and environment in Northern California. He has worked as a lecturer and curator in New York City, and has called the Bay Area his home since 2020.