Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art - Lecture by Caroline Fowler

First Friday Free Lecture

In this lecture, Caroline Fowler will examine the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in forming the visual language of a period often described today as the "Dutch Golden Age." Fowler will think about how seventeenth-century artists negotiated the violence of the slave trade, and its impact on the Dutch pictorial economy, focusing in particular on Frans Post, and his views of plantations in Brazil.

Caroline Fowler's new book, Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art (Duke University Press, 2025) will be available for purchase in the museum shop.

 

Caroline Fowler is Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute. She is a scholar of Dutch art, often within a global context, and her previous books include Drawing and the Senses and The Art of Paper: From the Americas to the Holy Land. She is also the co-editor of the Art/Work series with Princeton University Press and occasionally hosts the podcast In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing.

 

Images: Book cover: Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art, Caroline Fowler, Duke University Press, 2025. Portrait photo credit: Tucker Bair.

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