Midwest Museum Talks | Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape

Villa Albertine Chicago and  Saint Louis Art Museum are thrilled to host an exceptional transatlantic conversation on the dialogue between the work of the French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, and the American Abstract Expressionist painter, Joan Mitchell. It is grounded in the paintings currently on view in the Saint Louis Art Museum exhibition, Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape, a partnership with the Louis Vuitton Foundation and the Musee Marmottan Monet. The discussion will cover a range of subjects including the two artists’ attitudes to nature, abstraction, music, and poetry. 

This discussion will be moderated by Professor Lionel Cuillé, founder and director of the French connexions center of excellence at Washington University in St. Louis. 

The Speakers

Simon Kelly, Curator and Head of Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum

Simon Kelly has published extensively, particularly on nineteenth and early twentieth-century French art, and organized numerous international loan exhibitions, for example, Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade (2017) and Millet and Modern Art (2020). In 2021, he published the book, Theodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market. Kelly is the curator of the Saint Louis exhibition, Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape, and is currently working on an exhibition on Matisse and the sea.

Marianne Mathieu, Art historian and Curator

Marianne Mathieu created the international relations department of the Musée d'Orsay in 2003 and then served for ten years as Deputy Director, head of Collections and Exhibitions of the Musée Marmottan Monet. In 2022, she founded the ACPA agency - Advising Curating Producing Art. A specialist in Impressionism, she has curated major exhibitions in France and abroad for more than twenty years. Among others "Impression, Sunrise. The Biography of a Painting" (2014, Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet), "Monet The Collector" (2017, Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet) "Julie Manet, the impressionist memory" (2022, Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet) and more recently "Monet-Mitchell" at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. She is the author of several essays and books devoted to Claude Monet and Impressionism.

Dr. Lionel Cuillé, Teaching professor of French, Washington University in St Louis

Dr. Lionel Cuillé is the founder and director of the French connexions center of excellence at Washington University in St. Louis. His teaching and research focus on contemporary French poetry, the avant-gardes, and ecocriticism. He co-authored Francis Ponge, ateliers contemporains (Garnier, 2019).