"Some Women Landscapists": The Forgotten Artists of the Hudson River School

Join us for a conversation about the women artists omitted from the dominant narrative of 19th-century American landscape painting, and how artists, institutions, and scholars are reframing that history to bring visibility to long-overlooked women landscapists today.

The histories of the National Academy of Design and the Hudson River School, both dating to 1825, are inextricably linked. Asher Durand and Thomas Cole, long considered the originators of the Hudson River School, were among the Academy’s founders. Countless examples of work by women landscapists appear in the Academy’s exhibition records, but only a fraction has survived. Where is that work today and why do we know so little about these artists?

Artist Anna Plesset, scholar and art dealer Jennifer Krieger, and John Murphyfrom the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College discuss these historical omissions and how institutions are giving these artists long-overdue recognition in a conversation moderated by Kate Menconeri. This program was organized by Anna Plesset in collaboration with the National Academy of Design.

RESERVATIONS: Admission is free but reservations are required.

ACCESSIBILITY: This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. To request free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service, email your request at least three weeks in advance of the event to info@nationalacademy.org.

About the Speakers

Jennifer C. Krieger is dealer and scholar of American art. She graduated with honors from Vassar College with degrees in Art History, Economics and French. In 2005, she founded Hawthorne Fine Art, LLC, a Manhattan based American Art gallery of 19th and early 20th century artists. Chosen for her research on 19th century women artists, Jennifer served as the co-curator of the 2010 exhibition, Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. She is a member of the Thursday Club women’s charity organization, the Women’s History Institute of Historic Hudson Valley and a Trustee of The Olana Partnership.

Anna Plesset is a New York-based artist whose work examines the mechanisms that shape history, revealing what has been obscured by erasure, discrimination, and time. Recent solo and group exhibitions include American Paradise, Jack Barrett, New York, NY; Value Studies, PATRON, Chicago, IL; Light of Winter, Perrotin, New York, NY; Women Reframe American Landscape, Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY; and ID: Formations of the Self, Shirley Fiterman Art Center at BMCC, New York, NY. Plesset has received numerous awards and fellowships including a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and a Terra Summer Residency Fellowship in Giverny, France. Her work has been written about and reviewed widely in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Artnet, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Frieze, ARTnews, Cultured, e-flux, and The Brooklyn Rail.

John P. Murphy is the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. A scholar of American art, he is the author of New Deal Art: Culture and Crisis in the Great Depression, published in Thames & Hudson's World of Art series. He is currently overseeing a Terra Foundation-supported reinstallation of the Loeb’s galleries dedicated to Hudson River School paintings.

Kate Menconeri is a New York-based curator, writer, and educator. Across 25 years she has organized more than 100 exhibitions and publications, spanning Thomas Cole and Georgia O’Keeffe, to internationally celebrated contemporary artists including Nick Cave, Mark Dion, Teresita Fernández, Jeffrey Gibson, and Kiki Smith. Most recently, she served as Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Contemporary Art, and Fellowship at the Thomas Cole National Historic, where she established an award-winning exhibition program that toured nationally and launched OPEN HOUSE: Contemporary Art in Conversation with Cole, a series of artist driven site-responsive installations. Curated exhibitions have been featured in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, The Boston Globe, and Hyperallergic. Menconeri has presented talks nationally and internationally including for the United Nations. She holds an MA with honors from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

Image: Value Study 10: In the Catskills, Looking Towards Hunter Mountain / Copied from a picture by V.C.T. / n.d. 2025 Oil and graphite on canvas 9 x 14 inches. Courtesy of the Artist, Anna Plesset.