Distinguished Lecture | "Damsels in Distress: Shipwreck and Rescue" with Margaret Adler

In the nineteenth century, the ocean was the main method of transporting people and goods across large distances. Travel by ship was anything but safe. And a whole category of artworks of wreck and rescue at sea gave audiences the thrill of disaster from the safe spaces of galleries and parlors. Most of these artworks show frail maidens being brought to safety by burly men. But were all damsels helpless and in distress? Through an examination of the work of Winslow Homer and popular periodicals, Adler will shed light on the fierce females who challenged conventional notions of male heroism and made a mark on the genre of images of perils at sea.

Catharine M. Rogers Lecture Series

Register for this lecture at https://secure.nbmaa.org/lectures/maggie-adler

Images: (Left) Photo credit: Diane Durant; (Right) Winslow Homer, Homeward–Bound (For Harper's Weekly, December 21, 1867), 1867, Wood engraving on paper, Frame: 20 × 26 1/2 in. (50.8 × 67.3 cm), JULI Collection of Judith Vance Weld Brown and Lindsley Wellman, 2011.41JULI