You Are Here
 |
|
Elizabeth O'Leary (VFMA photo by Travis Fullerton) |
Randolph-Macon College continues its interdisciplinary series, “Working Girls,” with a lecture on Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. in Old Chapel, Room 212 (the Topping Room). Elizabeth O’Leary, associate curator of American art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, will present “Lilly Martin Spencer: Images of Women’s Work and Working Women.” This event is free and open to the public.
Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902) was perhaps the best-known female artist in antebellum America. Drawing her subject matter from the private realm of a middle-class wife and mother, Spencer typically used members of her own household as models. Elizabeth O’Leary will explore Spencer’s servant images in particular and the ways in which her representation changed as the painter’s domestic imagery garnered public attention.
O’Leary is a distinguished scholar of American art and her publications include
At Beck and Call: The Representation of Domestic Servants in Nineteenth-Century Painting and
From Morning to Night: Domestic Service in Maymont House and the Gilded Age South.
The “Working Girls” series is sponsored by CASE (Committee on Assemblies and Special Events) and the Randolph-Macon College history, art history, sociology and anthropology, and women’s studies departments.
For more information about the “Working Girls” series, contact R-MC History Professor Anne Throckmorton at (804) 752-7269.