Gallery Talk: On Location: Drawing the Outdoors
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
Inventor Sir John Frederick William Herschel used a novel imaging technology—the camera lucida—to represent an engineering marvel, the Menai Suspension Bridge, designed by Thomas Telford. We will consider how innovative technology and infrastructure, respectively as artistic method and subject, were entangled with the prevailing Romantic sensibilities of the time. Led by:Alec Aldrich, Stanley H. Durwood Foundation Curatorial Fellow, Division of European and American Art On Location: Drawing the Outdoors features drawings by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh, among many others. The exhibition is on view from September 18, 2026 to January 17, 2027.