Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755-1842), Julie Le Brun as Flora (1799), Oil on canvas, Museum Purchase

This outstanding series features some of the world’s foremost art historians, curators, artists, and collectors. Everyone is invited to these free lectures. An always elegant reception for Collectors Circle members, also sponsored by Northern Trust, is held one hour before the lecture. Cynthia Astrack is President of the Collectors Circle.

Katharine Baetjer, Curator in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will focus on “Vigée Le Brun at Home and Abroad.”

Ms. Baetjer, noted art historian Joseph Baillio, and Paul Lang, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada, organized Vigée LeBrun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France. This, the artist’s first retrospective, featured the MFA’s prized painting Julie Le Brun as Flora (1799). Dr. Mary Tompkins Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “an undersung portrait painter … finally gets the close-up to which she is firmly entitled.”

A distinguished curator, Ms. Baetjer has spent her entire 45-year career at the Metropolitan Museum, specializing in European Old Master paintings. She has curated a wealth of exhibitions, including on Watteau, Canaletto, English landscape paintings and watercolors, and European portrait miniatures.

In addition, she has written numerous catalogue essays and scholarly articles. She was the editor of and wrote the introduction to Philippe de Montebello and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977-2008, which honored the accomplishments of this legendary director.

Ms. Baetjer has taught at Barnard College and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and has been a visiting J. Paul Getty Museum Scholar. She holds her BA magna cum laude from Radcliffe College and her MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She also studied at The Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of London.

Collectors Circle Lectures are free with MFA admission and are open to the public.

Information on becoming a member of the Collectors Circle can be found HERE.

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