“Monet by the Sea” Wayne W. and Frances Knight Parrish Lecture by Dr. George T.M. Shackelford, Deputy Director of the Kimbell Art Museum

FREE with Museum admission.

Dr. Shackelford is internationally known for his scholarship on late nineteenth-century French art and for his outstanding lectures. Prior to his appointment in 2012 at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, he chaired the Department of the Art of Europe at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which he joined in 1996 as Curator of European Paintings. He has also served as the Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In his Parrish Lecture, Dr. Shackelford will discuss Monet’s lifelong romance with the sea in all of its aspects, from his native Normandy to the shores of the Mediterranean in France and in Italy.  From his beach scenes at Trouville and Ste. Adresse in the 1860s and 1870s to his views of the coasts at Antibes in the 1880s, and on to his late images of the waters of the Adriatic in Venice, Monet returned to the beaches and bays to study the special qualities of atmosphere and of reflected light that are found near the ocean.

Among Dr. Shackelford’s many impressive projects are Degas: The Dancers for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and Degas Landscapes and A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Samuel H. Kress Collection for the MFA, Houston.  At the MFA, Boston, he co-curated such acclaimed exhibitions as Monet in the 20^th Century, Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, Van Gogh: Face to Face, Impressionist Still Life, Gauguin Tahiti, and Degas and the Nude.

His first exhibition at the Kimbell is Faces of Impressionism: Portraits from the Musée d’Orsay (through January 25). Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye (later this year) will be followed by two shows devoted to Monet’s early and late works (2016 and 2018). He has published many catalogue essays and journal articles and has lectured at museums and universities throughout the United States and Europe.

Dr. Shackelford has been chair of the Arts and Artifacts Advisory Panel to the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities (United States Indemnity Program). In recognition of his contributions to scholarship on French art, he was elected a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic of France in 2005 and was promoted to the rank of Officier in 2012. He was a founding trustee of the Association of Art Museum Curators and served as its president from 2006 to 2010.

Each year, the Parrish Lecture brings an outstanding speaker to the community. The Parrishes, who lived most of their lives in Washington, D.C., donated many of the MFA’s most significant pre-Columbian objects. They are displayed in a gallery named in their honor. Mr. Parrish was a successful publisher of aviation magazines and Mrs. Parrish was Director of the U.S. Passport Office from 1955-1977. This is the first time Dr. Shackelford has lectured in the area.