"Jemima Blackburn and Fidelia Bridges: Transatlantic Artists, Naturalists, and Conservationists" with Holly Trostle Brigham

Join us for a Lunch at the Library presentation from Holly Trostle Brigham, who will be discussing "Jemima Blackburn and Fidelia Bridges: Transatlantic Artists, Naturalists, and Conservationists."

Holly Trostle Brigham is a painter based in Philadelphia who creates life-sized figures in watercolor that depict historical and mythological women. In 2023, Brigham had a solo show at the Reading Public Museum in Reading, PA and in 2022, Brigham had a solo show at the Delaware Art Museum called ‘I Wake Again’: Holly Trostle Brigham on Elizabeth Siddal. She will exhibit at Muhlenberg College in 2026.

Brigham’s paintings and artist books are in the collections at the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, Smith College Museum of Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Allentown Art Museum, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, among others. Brigham was born in Carlisle, PA, attended Smith College where she studied Art History and studied abroad in Florence, Italy.  She went on to study Art History at the graduate level at the University of Pittsburgh, fine art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and earned her MFA in Painting at the George Washington University.  She has taught at Pasadena City College, Worcester State College, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Baum School of Art.

This event will take place on Thursday, January 30, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. ET in Benjamin Franklin Hall and will also be livestreamed. This event is free to attend but registration is required.

Please register to attend in-person and online. Lunch will be provided to those attending in person.

Jemima Blackburn and Fidelia Bridges: Transatlantic Artists, Naturalists, and Conservationists

Visual artist Holly Trostle Brigham will discuss the research and planning for her upcoming exhibition inspired by two 19th-century women naturalist-artists, Fidelia Bridges and Jemima Blackburn. Brigham will talk about Bridges, an American, and Blackburn, a Scot, and how despite living on opposite sides of the Atlantic, both women shared common pursuits.  Both Bridges and Blackburn closely observed and studied birds in nature and promoted conservation at a time when birds were being depleted by sport hunters and the demands of fashion. Despite the challenges imposed by Victorian expectations of women, both Bridges and Blackburn succeeded as exhibiting artists and published illustrators.  Blackburn's observations on bird behavior were even quoted by Charles Darwin in the sixth edition of The Origin of Species. Brigham's goal is to restore the acclaim that these artists achieved in their time, bring their work to the wider attention of 21st-century audiences, put their work in cultural and historical context and create a whole new body of work inspired by Blackburn and Bridges.