2024 Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellows Lectures – Day 1

From May 8–10, 2024, the Smithsonian American Art Museum will present a series of lectures by the museum’s 2023–2024 research fellows. This webcast captures the six talks presented in Sessions I and II of the series on May 8. For more information on SAAM’s fellowship program, visit
The first session features new research by predoctoral fellows Phillippa Pitts, Elizabeth Fair, and Natalie E. Wright. Their lectures discuss medicinal references in Frederic Edwin Church’s "The Heart of the Andes," artist Nanying Stella Wong’s engagement with the architecture of San Francisco’s Chinatown, and disability-centric innovations in functionality in postwar American fashion. The second session focuses on artworks that emerged from liberatory contexts within the United States in the nineteenth century, bringing together new scholarship by senior fellow Cassandra Good and predoctoral fellows Molly K. Eckel and Ashley Williams. Lectures in this session focus on (under)representations of women’s political participation in George Caleb Bingham’s Election Series, abolitionist messaging in Robert S. Duncanson’s "Robbing the Eagle’s Nest” and reflections of post-emancipation life in H. Wilson & Co. pottery. Session I: Moderated by Robin Veder, executive editor of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum Phillippa Pitts, Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Boston University, "Pharmacoepic Vision: Seeing and Unseeing in Frederic Edwin Church's The Heart of the Andes" Elizabeth Fair, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, “Drawing Out Ornament: Nanying Stella Wong and the San Francisco Chinatown YWCA" Natalie E. Wright, George Gurney Predoctoral Fellow, University of Wisconsin—Madison, "‘Clothing that Works’: Disability and Function in Postwar America" Session II: Moderated by Eleanor Jones Harvey, senior curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum - - Cassandra Good, Smithsonian Institution Senior Fellow, Marymount University, "Remembering the Ladies in George Caleb Bingham's Election Series" Molly K. Eckel, Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, Princeton University, “The Prophecy of Divine Justice in Robert S. Duncanson’s Robbing the Eagle’s Nest (1856)” Ashley Williams, William H. Truettner Predoctoral Fellow, Columbia University, "Marking Freedom: Wilson Pottery as Archive Within and Beyond Slavery"