Join art historian Caitlin Meehye Beach for the Eldredge Prize lecture “Sculpted Bodies and the Matter of Racial Capitalism.” She is the 2023 recipient of the Eldredge Prize, which annually recognizes originality and thoroughness of research and excellence in writing, for her book Sculpture at the Ends of Slavery. Beach explores the intersections between the economic wealth generated by enslavement and the materials, production and circulation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sculpture. She also highlights the artists’ role in reproducing anti-Blackness even as they professed anti-slavery politics. In her lecture, Beach will use her book as a starting point to discuss sculpture’s relationship to ideas about race and the human body in nineteenth-century art and material culture.

Beach is an assistant professor of art history, affiliated faculty in African American Studies at Fordham University, and co-director of Fordham’s Asian American studies program.

The lecture will be held in person and online; registration is required.

Free | Registration required

In-person | Smithsonian American Art Museum

McEvoy Auditorium