On Tuesday, April 3, Dr. Joan Stack, curator of the Art Collections at The State Historical Society of Missouri, will deliver an art lecture on the works and paintings of George Caleb Bingham. Bingham’s paintings provide insight into the conversation on slavery and secession.

The 5:30 p.m. lecture, “Picturing a State Divided: Missouri Artist George Caleb Bingham and the American Civil War,” will take place in Pennsylvania Hall’s Lyceum, located along North Washington Street, followed by a free reception open to the public.

Stack has been Curator of Art Collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri since 2006. She manages a permanent collection of over 12,000 artworks. After receiving her Ph.D. in art history from Washington University in St. Louis, Stack spent most of her career in academic museums. Her current studies focus on the work of George Caleb Bingham, and in 2011 she authored one of the “best books of the year” by the Kansas City Star. The introductory essay for the authoritative publication of his letters is entitled, “But I Forgot that I am an Artist not a Politician: The Letters of George Caleb Bingham.”

The Department of Art and Art History is sponsoring the lecture in partnership with the Sesquicentennial Planning Committee.

This event is part of Gettysburg College’s American Civil War Sesquicentennial commemoration. The College will sponsor events and programs throughout the anniversary that runs from 2011-2015 with special focus on 2013, which marks the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg, and President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. For more information, visit www.gettysburg.edu/civilwar2013 and www.gettysburgcivilwar150.com.

Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) played a vital role in the Civil War, with more than 200 alumni serving the Union or Confederacy, and the College’s Pennsylvania Hall functioning as an observation post and hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg. On November 19, 1863, College students and faculty processed to hear Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address at the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Earlier in the year, an 1851 graduate of the College, prominent attorney David Wills, had invited Lincoln to deliver a few appropriate remarks” at the cemetery’s dedication, and the president stayed with the Wills family on the square the night before delivering his famous speech.

Founded in 1832, Gettysburg College is a highly selective four-year residential college of liberal arts and sciences with a strong academic tradition. Alumni include Rhodes Scholars, a Nobel laureate, and other distinguished scholars. The college enrolls 2,600 undergraduate students and is located on a 200-acre campus adjacent to the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.

Article by Libby Conroy, office of communications and marketing intern
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