Clark Art Presents Symposium on Guillaume Lethiere

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Clark Art Institute presents a one-day symposium on Friday, Sept. 27 in celebration of Guillaume Lethière.

The exhibition, organized in partnership with the Musée du Louvre, is the first to investigate Lethière's extraordinary career. This free event takes place from 9:30 am–6:30 pm in the Manton Research Center auditorium.

The symposium invites scholars and the public to examine Lethière’s body of work together, and to contextualize the presence and reception of Caribbean artists in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The event is moderated by Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director at the Clark; Esther Bell, deputy director and Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Chief Curator at the Clark; and Sophie Kerwin, doctoral student in art history at the Bard Graduate Center, New York, New York.

Speakers and presentations include:

Frédéric Régent (maître de conférences and directeur de recherche, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris) on “Guillaume Lethière: The Exceptional Trajectory of a Free Person of Color”

C. C. McKee (assistant professor of the history of art, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania) on “Lethière’s Allegorical Confines: Indemnity, Colonialism, and African Diasporic Fantasies”

Meredith Martin (professor of art history at New York University and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, New York) on “Colonial Networks: Remapping the ‘Paris’ Art World in the French Antilles”

Remi Poindexter (Ph.D. candidate, The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, New York and University Fellow in Art History at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina) on “Picturesque Plantations: Jenny Prinssay’s Construction of a French Caribbean Idyll”

Francesca Alberti (Director of the Department of Art History at the Académie de France in Rome–Villa Medici and professor of Art History at the Université de Tours and the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours, France) on “Guillaume Lethière’s Roman Years”

Richard-Viktor Sainsily-Cayol (multimedia visual artist and urban scenographer, Guadeloupe) on “From Neoclassicism to Preromanticism: Lethière, the Missing Link?”

Free and open to the public. For the full program schedule, visit clark.edu/events. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524.


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Clark Art, Du Bois Freedom Center Host Poetry Reading

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Sunday, Oct. 6 at 4 pm, the Clark Art Institute hosts poets Iain Haley Pollock and Nathan McClain in the Manton Research Center auditorium for a free poetry reading.
 
Pollock reads poems from his most recent book, "Ghost, Like a Place," and from a forthcoming collection. McClain, whose poetry has been described as "no-nonsense, meat and potatoes, good gotdam poetry," also reads from his work. The two poets then discuss their stylistic differences and conceptual overlap when it comes to poetry, language, race, and W.E.B. Du Bois's concept of double consciousness. A Q&A and book signing follow the event.
 
Iain Haley Pollock is the author of three poetry collections, "Spit Back a Boy" (2011), "Ghost, Like a Place" (Alice James Books, 2018), and the forthcoming "All the Possible Bodies" (Alice James, September 2025). His poems have appeared in numerous other publications, ranging from American Poetry Review and The Kenyon Review to The New York Times Magazine and The Progressive. Pollock has received several honors for his work including the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the Bim Ramke Prize for Poetry from Denver Quarterly, and a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. He directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville University in Purchase, New York.
 
Nathan McClain is the author of two collections of poetry, "Previously Owned" (Four Way Books, 2022), longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and Scale (Four Way Books, 2017). McClain is a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference; he is also a Cave Canem fellow. His poems and prose have appeared in The Hopkins Review, Plume Poetry 10, The Common, Guesthouse, and Poetry Northwest, among others. McClain received his MFA from Warren Wilson College. He now teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.
 
Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A Q&A and book signing follow the event. Copies of recent books by Pollock and McClain will be available for purchase at the reading and in the Museum Store. This event is co-organized with the Du Bois Freedom Center, Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
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