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The Farnsworth Art Museum will host a two-day symposium on Thursday, October 22, and Friday, October 23, exploring the creative vision and enduring legacy of Betsy James Wyeth. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth, the symposium brings together curators, scholars, artists, historians, and cultural leaders for conversations examining Wyeth’s work in environmental design, historic preservation and adaptive reuse, her creative partnership with her husband, Andrew Wyeth, and her lasting impact on the arts and culture of Maine. This symposium is made possible by support from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.
Opening Day Keynote Lecture: Thursday, October 22
4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
The event opens with a social hour in the library with light refreshments and wine. The keynote lecture follows in the auditorium. Registration is required.
Keynote Presentation: The Making of Betsy Wyeth’s Island World
Speakers: Philip Conkling, Writer, naturalist, and co-founder of the Island Institute
Peter Ralston, Photographer and co-founder of the Island Institute
The journey of Peter Ralston and Philip Conkling with the people and places of the Gulf of Maine is like no other. Essential texts like Conkling’s much-reprinted book Islands in Time and photographs like Ralston’s widely reproduced Pentecost bring to life the continuing story of the resilience of Maine’s unbridged islands and the people, creatures, and plant life that call them home. In this keynote presentation of the symposium, Ralston and Conkling will share their experience working closely with Betsy Wyeth at the start of her most ambitious world-shaping project: the transformation of Allen Island, five miles off Port Clyde. Their firsthand accounts of the early days, accompanied by Ralston’s powerful photographs from the period, clarify the scale of this endeavor and the core principles of Betsy Wyeth’s environmental design work.
All-day Symposium: Friday, October 23
10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Join us for a full day of conversations and panel talks between curators, scholars, and artists. Registration begins at 10 a.m. and includes coffee and morning refreshments. There will be an afternoon break; lunch is on your own, with self-guided gallery access.
Panel 1: Betsy James Wyeth and the Maine Historic Preservation Movement
Speakers: Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., Maine State Historian in conversation with William L. Coleman, Ph.D., Wyeth Study Center Director and Wyeth Foundation Curator
No one knows the story of Maine’s complex relationship to the built traces of its past like Maine State Historian Earle Shettleworth. In this conversation, he shares his unique perspective from a life in historic preservation on Betsy James Wyeth’s own commitment to vernacular architecture – ordinary people’s buildings – in the midcoast region. Shettleworth worked directly with Betsy Wyeth at the start of her Allen Island project and will place her efforts there and elsewhere in a broader context.
Panel 2: Creative Forces: Betsy James Wyeth in Context of Her Peers
Speakers: Thomas Denenberg, John Wilmerding Director, Shelburne Museum
Gail Levin, Distinguished Professor, City University of New York
In conversation with Francesca Soriano, Ph.D., Curator of American Art, Farnsworth Art Museum
This panel will explore the unique vision and creative partnership of Betsy Wyeth in dialogue with those of two visionary women who paved the way for her: Electra Havemeyer Webb and Josephine Nivison Hopper. Denenberg, who leads the remarkable museum Webb founded, will dive into the connections between her collection and relocation of buildings and Wyeth’s own practice of adaptive re-use. Art historian and leading Edward Hopper scholar Gail Levin will clarify Josephine Hopper’s essential role in her husband’s career, the evidence of her brief but significant encounter with Betsy Wyeth, and parallels to the Wyeths’ creative partnership.
Panel 3: The Historical Imagination of Betsy James Wyeth
Speakers: Arthur Spiess, Chief Historic Preservationist, Prehistoric Archaeology at the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, and Margaret Creighton, Professor Emerita of Bates College in conversation with William L. Coleman, Ph.D., Wyeth Study Center Director and Wyeth Foundation Curator
The speakers in this session reflect on aspects of Betsy Wyeth’s relationship to the history of the sites she shaped through a mixture of research and imagination. Arthur Spiess, who contributed an essay to the catalogue that accompanies the By Design exhibition, shares his experience working on Allen Island after Betsy’s embrace of professional archaeology to understand the layered histories of the site, especially its significance to the Indigenous peoples of the region. Margaret Creighton brings the insights of her own scholarship on maritime labor in the Gulf of Maine and beyond to clarify Betsy Wyeth’s romantic relationship to work on the water and the objects associated with it that populate her Maine environments.
Panel 4: Desire Paths: Contemporary Artists on Allen + Benner Islands
Speakers: Elaine K. Ng, Artist, and Mandy Lamb, Artist, in conversation with Kendall DeBoer, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Colby College Museum of Art
The three-museum collaborative structure of the By Design exhibition includes new work by a number of contemporary artists made in relation to the sites that Betsy Wyeth shaped. Two of these artists, Mandy Lamb and Elaine K. Ng, come together in this panel with their collaborator, curator Kendall DeBoer, to discuss their experiences in residence on Allen and Benner Islands, considering Betsy Wyeth’s traces alongside the islands’ layered histories and living ecosystems. Inspired by repeated visits, close looking, and time spent in the landscape, they will share the stories behind their newly created artworks, reflecting on the many ways places and people can shape one another By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth, on view in the Farnsworth’s Wyeth Center through December 31, explores Betsy James Wyeth’s expansive creative practice and her role as a designer, preservationist, collector, collaborator, and steward of place. Through art, objects, architecture, and landscapes, the exhibition offers a broader understanding of a woman whose creative vision extended well beyond her well-known role in the life and career of Andrew Wyeth. This exhibition is co-organized by Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; and Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; in association with the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.
Registration for the symposium includes museum admission and all Friday lectures. Separate tickets are available for Thursday evening’s keynote presentation. Advance registration is required. To register, visit www.farnsworthmuseum.org/event/by-design-conversations-a-symposium/.
Image credit: Peter Ralston, Keeper, ca. 1988, © Peter Ralson. Courtesy Ralsongallery.com
