Evan Neely: North of Robert Duncanson’s Canvas
Art historian Evan Neely will be presenting on the work of African American landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson. One of three lectures on the legacy of colonial histories in North America; the privatization of nature and land; and the logic of the plantation and enclosure on contemporary life in the series Nature and Sovereignty organized by Alena Williams, Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies in Winter Semester 2025/26.
Evan Neely is Associate Chair of History of Art & Design at Pratt Institute, New York. His recent book, Political Economy, Race, and the Image of Nature in the United States, 1825-1878 (Routledge 2024), analyzes how the aesthetics of landscape representation shaped and rationalized practices of colonization in the northeastern United States, and, more broadly, how nascent theories of ecology were influenced by the intellectual configurations that emerged on this site. He received his PhD in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University, New York.