Nancy Siegel is Assistant Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication and Professor of Art History and Culinary History at Towson University. She specializes in American landscape studies, underrepresented women artists of the 19th century, print culture, and culinary history of the 18th and 19th centuries. Her book, Susie M. Barstow: Redefining the Hudson River School, complemented the 2024 touring exhibition she co-curated, Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow & Her Circle/Contemporary Practices. Dr. Siegel is the author/editor of numerous publications related to nineteenth-century American art and culture. She is currently researching the artist Louisa Davis Minot and her newest book, Political Appetites: The Power of Food in Revolutionary America, will be available October 2026.
Albany Institute of History and Art (125 Washington Ave, Albany, NY 12210)
Inspired Landscapes by Women of the Hudson River School: Recent Acquisitions at the Albany Institute of History & Art - Lecture by Dr. Nancy Siegel
Combining geographical accuracy with romantic vision, 19th-century landscape painters Susie Barstow, Julie Hart Beers, and Eliza Greatorex captured on canvas and paper the beauty and awe they experienced in the American landscape. Painting in the style of the Hudson River School, they favored sites that were well-known destinations for travelers, hikers, and tourists, and exhibited their work in academic venues alongside male colleagues. These acute businesswomen maintained their own financial assets and held careers as professional artists, yet until recently, have largely been omitted from the art historical canon. Dr. Nancy Siegel’s lecture examines the lives and careers of Barstow, Beers, and Greatorex while celebrating recent gifts and acquisitions of their work to the AIHA which complement its prestigious Hudson River School collection.
