Rachael Z. DeLue, the art historian and professor, will deliver this year’s annual Keating lecture, entitled “Against the Grain, or What We Can Learn from Early American Museums that Got it Wrong.”  

DeLue will discuss early museums in the United States, including Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum and Princeton’s own natural history museum. From today’s perspective, these institutions failed—sometimes egregiously—in their mission to educate and tell the truth. DeLue will explore what those failures might teach us about museums in the present.  

Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public. No tickets required.  

In addition to being the chair of the Department of Art and Archaeology, DeLue is the Christopher Binyon Sarofim ’86 Professor in American Art and faculty in the Effron Center for the Study of America. DeLue specializes in the history of American and transatlantic art and visual culture, with particular focus on intersections among art, science, and the history and theory of knowledge and on the transnational and transcultural formation of “America” as a contested geography, identity, and idea. Her publications include George Inness and the Science of Landscape (2004), Landscape Theory (2008, coedited with James Elkins), and Arthur Dove: Always Connect (2016). 

This event is part of the Museum’s Late Thursdays programming, made possible in part by Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, with additional support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.