Alexis Rockman & Dorothy Spears in Conversation with Kurt Andersen

Naples: Course of Empire is a series of seven panoramic paintings by American artist Alexis Rockman inspired by Thomas Cole’s nineteenth-century cycle The Course of Empire. Executed in Rockman’s signature style of history painting, the works examine the long and fraught relationship between human civilization and the natural world.

With time itself as protagonist, this monograph of the same name will be released June 2026 and presents the entire development of the seven panoramic paintings in great detail. By connecting art history with pressing contemporary realities, climate science, and ecological collapse, the cycle paints a new picture of our civilization.

Rather than presenting history as linear progress, the cycle unfolds as recurrence: creation, eruption, collapse, and transformation repeating across vastly different scales of time. Alongside the paintings, the book presents Rockman’s field drawings made with volcanic material gathered directly from Mount Vesuvius. These works function as both studies and relics: records of direct contact between image and geology.

Together, they form a contemporary Course of Empire—in this case, not a moral allegory but an ecological one—where civilization is revealed as a brief, combustible phase within a far larger planetary story.

With an insightful essay written by Dorothy Spears, this master work provokes reflection and conversation.

Free with R.S.V.P., guests will have the option to prepurchase a copy of Naples: Course of Empire.
Hickory Stick Bookshop will be at the event selling copies of the books.

Photo courtesy Hirmer Publishers