Impressionism and Beyond: Making Art Modern in France, 1850-1950

Today, many people see a world of beauty in landscapes by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. Or they enjoy a glimpse into the private and public daily lives of the varied people depicted by Berthe Morisot and Edgar Degas, all captured in animated brushwork and rich colors. But this was not always the case. In this talk, Lisa Small takes us back to nineteenth-century Paris to survey the emergence of the successive avant-garde movements that shocked and dismayed the art world. These revolutions — from the grounded Realism of Gustave Courbet to the vivid Fauvism of Henri Matisse — were centered in France, but artists from other countries who came there to study and work also contributed to these dynamic artistic changes. Focusing primarily on works from the Brooklyn Museum’s renowned collection of modern European art, we will witness the broad shift from naturalism to abstraction, trace the waning influence of the Academy and Salon and the rise of a new, independent art market, and we will watch as artists start emphasizing not just what they see but how they see it (and what they feel about it).

About Lisa Small

Lisa Small was appointed Senior Curator of European Art in 2017 after joining the Brooklyn Museum in 2011 as Curator of Exhibitions. At the museum, she has curated or co-curated the exhibitions Monet & Venice (2024-26); It’s Pablomatic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby (2023); Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley (2020); Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Centuries of European Works on Paper (2019); The Brooklyn Della Robbia (2018-present); Rodin: The Body in Bronze (2017); Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe (2014); and the touring exhibition French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850–1950 (2017-21, 2023-27). She served as a coordinating curator for Brooklyn’s presentations of Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving (2019), Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern (2017), The Rise of Sneaker Culture (2015), The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk (2013), and Jean-Michel Othoniel: My Way (2012). Small has also overseen numerous installations of the museum’s European art collection, including most recently Monet to Morisot: The Real and Imagined in European Art (2022-23). In previous curatorial positions at the American Federation of Arts and the Dahesh Museum, she organized exhibitions including Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection; Gods and Heroes: Masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts; Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt; and Fantasy & Faith: The Art of Gustave Doré.