Student Research: Mapping Whistler’s Shopfronts

During the summer of 2021, Helen Bennett ’22 served as the Lunder Consortium for Whistler Studies intern, working with Justin McCann, Colby College Museum of Art Lunder Curator of American Art and Whistler Studies, to conduct research on artist James McNeill Whistler’s understanding of architectural change and urban growth in London during the Victorian era.

In the video above, she discusses her research, which will support Some Old Curiosity Shops: Whistler, Commerce, and the Art of Urban Change, an exhibition guest curated by David Park Curry, a 2020–21 Lunder Institute Senior Fellow. The exhibition is slated to open at the Colby Museum during the summer of 2023.

Helen’s internship is part of the Lunder Consortium for Whistler Studies, an initiative led by the Colby Museum and its Lunder Institute. Founded in 2010 the Lunder Consortium for Whistler Studies is dedicated to nurturing, producing, and disseminating original scholarship and critical analysis of James McNeill Whistler and his international artistic circles. The consortium members are the Art Institute of Chicago, the Colby College Museum of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and the University of Glasgow.

You can read more of Helen’s reflections on this project in The Lantern.

Homepage image: James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Grey and Gold—Chelsea Snow (detail), 1876. Oil on canvas, 18 5/8 x 24 5/8 in. (47 x 61 cm). Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, 1943.72