The art historian illuminates Cassatt’s life, work, and legacy, highlighting her ties to suffrage and political involvement on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York, Ruth E. Iskin offers a fresh perspective on the renowned painter and printmaker. Often defined solely as an American or French impressionist, Cassatt emerges as a multifaceted figure deeply engaged in the suffrage movement and committed to shaping both artistic and political spheres. Iskin’s comprehensive study, which relied on the Library’s collection of rare and unique works by Cassatt, reimagines and contextualizes Cassatt’s feminist perspective amid the heated suffrage debates of her time.

Iskin will discuss with Tulane University professor of European art Michelle Foa the lasting impact of Cassatt’s work on the art world and the broader political and cultural landscape.

To join | Please register for an In-Person Ticket. Doors will open around 1:30 PM. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A standby line will form 30 minutes before the program.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ruth E. Iskin’s current book, Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York: The Making of a Transatlantic Legacy, is the first comprehensive study of Cassatt’s life, work, and legacy through the prism of a transatlantic framework. Her first book, Modern Woman and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting, shed new light on the Impressionists’ representations of women as Parisian consumers and creators of fashion and as spectators and workers at café concerts. Critics noted that Iskin’s second book, The Poster: Art Advertising and Collecting, 1860s–1900s, was “a landmark in art historical studies,” the “definitive study of the poster” and “a towering monument” that “sets the standard for future studies.” Iskin is the editor of Re-envisioning the Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World, a volume that led MoMA to invite her to consult for the re-installation of the museum’s galleries displaying art from 1880 to 1940. She has published numerous articles in journals, books, and museum exhibition catalogues, and her writing has been translated into eight languages. Iskin holds a PhD from UCLA, has taught art history in the U.S. and in Israel, and is Professor Emerita of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of the Arts.

Michelle Foa is associate professor of nineteenth-century European art in the Art Department of Tulane University. Her first book, Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision, was published in 2015 by Yale University Press. Her second book, Edgar Degas and the Matter of Art, is under contract with Yale, and part of this research published in The Art Bulletin was awarded the 2022 Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Article Prize. Articles on Degas are forthcoming in the journals Art History and West 86th, and she recently co-curated the exhibition Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism at the Clark Art Institute.

Her work has been supported by numerous fellowships and grants, including from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, where she was a Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, where she was the Florence Gould Foundation Fellow, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the French National Institute for Art History (INHA).

She is Vice President of the National Committee for the History of Art and on the organizing committee for the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) quadrennial conference in 2028, as well as serves as Programs Chair for the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art.

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ACCESSIBILITY

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Courtesy Ruth E. Iskin
Courtesy Michelle Foa