Tuesday Talks: Ingrid Steffensen: Solving for Alice Stallknecht

Solving for Alice Stallknecht

SPEAKER: INGRID STEFFENSEN
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2022 – 5:00 PM

As a late-blooming woman artist in the mid-twentieth century who existed outside the established gallery system, Alice Stallknecht resists artistic pigeonholes. She has been characterized on the one hand as an outsider, a naif, a folk artist; on the other hand, she has been associated with German Expressionism. At a time when abstraction became the dominant mode and religion in art was an all but taboo subject, she forged a highly individualistic path that appropriated elements from sources as diverse as Byzantine art, the Italian Renaissance, the American mural painting movement, and Regionalism–but in the end, she must be considered in her own light as a powerful individualist with the strength to remain true to her vision.

Ingrid Steffensen earned her PhD in art history from the University of Delaware. She has taught art and architectural history at Princeton, Rutgers, NJIT, and Bryn Mawr, and is the author of numerous articles and books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and architecture. Her memoir Fast Girl: Don’t Brake until You See the Face of God and Other Good Advice from the Racetrack (Seal Press, 2012) tells the tale of a college professor and New Jersey dance mom who discovered her inner speed demon at the racetrack. She currently lives and writes in New York City.

Admission: $10, Members are Free