Frederic Church’s Expansive Global Vision Defined His Role as America’s National Artist
This talk examines how Frederic Edwin Church’s international travels shaped his career and established him as America’s leading landscape artist. Presented in connection with the 200th anniversary of Church’s birth, the program considers how his art addressed industrialization, environmental damage, changing empires, national identity, slavery, and the Civil War.
Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, a consulting senior curator and chair of The Church 200 Committee for The Olana Partnership, will lead the discussion. She is curator emerita of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she was formerly the Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture.
When: Saturday, November 7, 2026
Showtimes: 2:00 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Run time: 90 minutes
Venue: Charles Knox Smith Hall, Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Avenue
Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Consulting Senior Curator and Chair of The Church 200 Committee for The Olana Partnership; formerly the Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Tickets: Free; adult admission is listed as $0.00
Program: The presentation explores the influence of Church’s global travel on his life and work, including the ways his paintings engaged with industrialization, environmental destruction, the rise and fall of empires, the creation of national identity, slavery, and the consequences of the Civil War.
Speaker background: Following her retirement from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023, Kornhauser became senior curator and chair of The Olana Partnership’s Frederic Church Bicentennial Committee. She was co-curator and co-author of the exhibition and catalogue *Frederic Church: Global Artist*, on view at Olana through October 25, 2026.
Metropolitan Museum of Art experience: At The Met, Kornhauser completed the American Paintings and Sculpture galleries, which opened in January 2012, and expanded the collection through significant acquisitions. She co-curated *Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings*, which opened at The Met on January 30, 2018, before traveling to London’s National Gallery on June 11, 2018. Her other Met projects included exhibitions on Thomas Hart Benton’s *America Today* murals, George Caleb Bingham’s river paintings, and John Singer Sargent’s portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians.
Earlier curatorial work: Kornhauser held several positions at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art from 1985 to 2010, including deputy director and chief curator and Krieble Curator of American Painting and Sculpture. Her Wadsworth exhibitions and catalogues covered American modernism, Thomas Cole, Marsden Hartley, Samuel Colt, Ralph Earl, Joseph Cornell, Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, and 19th-century Australian and American landscapes. Her catalogue for the Ralph Earl exhibition received the 1992 Frances Tavern Museum Book Award.