Some American Stories, featuring selections from the museum’s American art collection across its Lunder Wing, underscores the complexity of the American experience. Inviting visitors to explore and question long-standing ideas of Americanness, Rebecca Zorach, an art historian and the great-granddaughter of Marguerite and William Zorach, discusses works by the artist couple in the Colby Museum collection. She will draw on a chapter of her recent book, Temporary Monuments, in which she discusses the artists’ lives, works, and legacy in Maine in the context of America’s racial enterprise.
Rebecca Zorach teaches in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University, with affiliations in programs in American Studies and Environmental Policy and Culture. She writes, teaches, and curates exhibitions on early modern European art, contemporary activist art, and art of the 1960s and 1970s. Her books include Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (2005); Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago 1965-1975 (2019); and Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America’s Racial Enterprise (2024). Her current work addresses art and ecology, public art, and racial justice.