The Kansas City Public Library welcomes Ian Kennedy for a discussion of the artistic response from the French Impressionists to the railroad’s advent in France on Wednesday, October 29, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.
This event is co-sponsored by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and is one of the first in a series of cooperative programs between the museum and the Library through November 2008 in conjunction with Art in the Age of Steam exhibition on display at the museum.
No industrial development has had such a sudden and transforming effect as the steam railroad. Within a few years of their introduction in 1830, trains far surpassed any other form of transportation in terms of the volume of passenger and freight traffic. This presentation will focus on Claude Monet’s paintings of the Gare St. Lazare, one of many train stations that made the French countryside an easily accessible setting for some of the most memorable works ever painted.
Ian Kennedy is the co-curator of the Art in the Age of Steam exhibition. After 20 years at Christie’s in London and New York as the senior vice president in charge of Old Master paintings, Kennedy is now the Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Also in conjunction with the exhibit, the Library and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art will present a performance of short excerpts from novels, letters, and poems read by the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre at 6:30 p.m. on Fridays, October 10 and 24. Each performance will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. The readings will take place at the museum. An exhibition ticket is required.
