For more than 200 years, American painters have been inspired to capture the beauty, violence, poetry and transformative power of the sea in American life. Their images of the sea have also expressed ambitions beyond America’s borders in aesthetically and conceptually distinctive ways. In American Waters offer a more inclusive way of thinking about American marine painting by reconsidering national symbols and narratives, origin stories, coastlines, horizons and ports, and broadening the conversation to embrace perspectives on the Middle Passage, immigration and Indigenous presence.

University of Arkansas Press spotlight author, Austen Barron Bailly, will discuss In American Waters: The Sea in American Painting. Experience a wide range of modern and historical American artists and the ways the mystery and power of the sea continues to be an inspiration.

Austen Barron Bailly, PhD, is chief curator of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Bailly leads the curatorial and collections management teams and is a key member of the strategy team, overseeing curatorial endeavors, collection growth and preservation, and contributing to the development of new exhibitions and installations. Bailly joined Crystal Bridges in July 2019, following her six-year tenure as the George Putnam Curator of American Art at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts. There she developed the American art collection and program and developed and co-curated nationally touring exhibitions including American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood, American Impressionist: Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals, and Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle.