Join us for the 11th annual J. Robert Maguire Lecture, this year featuring art historian Paul Staiti speaking about John Trumbull, one of the subjects of his new book Of Arms and Artists.

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The lecture, titled “John Trumbull’s Revolution,” will begin at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 1, at the Mount Independence State Historic Site Visitor Center and Museum. Professor Staiti will sign copies of his book following the talk, and copies will be on sale at the Museum gift shop.

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Trumbull, an officer closely connected to the Northern Department of the Continental Army, devoted one of his great paintings to the Canadian campaign of 1775. Our entire notion of what the war looked like is dependent on Trumbull. Yet his pictures, following eighteenth-century artistic practice, are semi-factual, semi-fictional. This lecture focuses on Trumbull’s shaping of the Revolution.

About the presenter: Paul Staiti, Alumnae Foundation Professor of Fine Arts at Mount Holyoke College. He has lectured at the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has been the recipient of senior fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities three times. He teaches courses on American art and architecture, as well as American cinema. In 2009 he was honored with Mount Holyoke’s Distinguished Teacher award.

The Washington Post says:

Of Arms and Artists brings to life a war you may not know as well as you think you do–and artists whose idealism on canvas didn’t always align with their private lives.

The Maguire lecture series is named in honor of Bob Maguire of Shoreham, Vermont, an historical scholar in his own right, and whose efforts in the early 1970s helped prevent the construction of a nuclear power plant near Mount Independence.