Angela Miller: “Friends and Relations: The Queer Symbolic Realists of the Lincoln Kirstein Circle”

Angela Miller, professor of art history and archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, will give a Zoom lecture in conjunction with the exhibition “Extra Ordinary: Magic, Mystery and Imagination in American Realism.” This lecture traces the shared interests — aesthetic, romantic and philosophical — that brought together three artists who enjoyed the support and patronage of Lincoln Kirstein, founder of the New York City Ballet. What did the paintings and photographs of Paul Cadmus, Jared French and George Tooker share with others in the magic realist mode in the years around World War II? Pre-registration is required.

Miller is the author of “Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825 - 1875,” which won awards from the American Studies Association and from the Smithsonian American Art Museum); and lead author, along with Janet Berlo, Bryan Wolf and Jennifer Roberts, of “American Encounters: Cultural Identity and the Visual Arts from the Beginning to the Present” (Pearson, 2008). Her recent article “Vibrant Matter: The Countermodern World of Pavel Tchelitchew” was published in the Art Bulletin in June 2020. Her current book project – supported by the National Gallery, the Met, and the National Endowment for the Humanities – focuses on the queer artists and writers anchored by Lincoln Kirstein in the years around World War II.