MA250

American Revolutionaries: George Washington, American Icon
2026-04-08 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Clark Art Institute, 225 South Street, Williamstown, MA, 01267, United States
American Revolutionaries is a series of gallery talks given by members of the curatorial team in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Each talk highlights artworks from the Burrows Gallery of American Decorative Arts, including silver from the Henry Morris and Elizabeth H. Burrows collection, which came to the Clark from an anonymous loan to celebrate the Bicentennial of the United States in 1976.
The second talk in the series, led by Oliver Hess, curatorial intern and graduate student in the Williams College/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art (Class of 2027), traces the public’s fascination with George Washington’s likeness, from formal portraits made during his life to the explosion of mourning imagery after his death. In looking at paintings, print culture, and funerary porcelain, among other objects, Hess reveals how a new nation’s unified grief and patriotic fervor created a market for an early American icon.
Image: Gilbert Stuart, George Washington (detail), 1796–1803, oil on canvas. The Clark, 1955.16
