Conservation of Edward Mitchell Bannister Paintings with Gwen Manthey
Join Gwen Manthey, Paintings Conservator, Smithsonian American Art Museum, for a talk about her research related to the conservation of Edward Mitchell Bannister’s paintings and the artist’s practice.
Gwen Manthey is Paintings Conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s visible Lunder Conservation Center, and assists with SI-wide initiatives, including the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative’s joint efforts with FEMA and Blue Shield, when possible. Prior to joining the Smithsonian, she was at the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MA), and the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA), and has maintained a private practice since 2013. She has been studying the paintings of Edwin Mitchell Bannister in earnest for five years, which was transferred to SAAM’s collection after the incorporation of the Frederick Douglas Institute into the Smithsonian Institution as the National Museum of African Art.
This talk is organized in conjunction with the new exhibition Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901) curated by Dr. David Woods.
About the Exhibition
Hidden Blackness is the first major exhibition of Edward Mitchell Bannister’s work ever presented in Canada.
Born in Saint Andrews, NB, Bannister was a self-taught, nineteenth-century, African American/Canadian painter of the Barbizon school known for pastoral landscapes and seascapes. In 1876, Bannister won the bronze medal (first place) at the Centennial Exposition Art Exhibition in Philadelphia, making him the first artist of African descent and the first Canadian to win a major art prize in North America.
Bannister was also a prominent abolitionist and philanthropist (along with his wife Christiana Carteaux Bannister), and a respected art critic and co-founder the Providence Art Club, one of the oldest art societies in the United States.
Detailed venue access information
Top Image: Edward Mitchell Bannister, Swale Land, 1898, oil on canvas, 78.8 x 117.0 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of G. William Miller (1983.95.60)
