A Lecture in Honor of William H. Truettner

In Tribute: Remarks Honoring William H. Truettner
Friday, March 27, 4–5 p.m.
McEvoy Auditorium, SAAM
Free | Registration required at https://events.blackthorn.io/en/5f4ZMUx7/in-tribute-remarks-honoring-william-h-truettner-5a2bVR2O3Rp/overview

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) invites you to join us for a special talk honoring William H. Truettner (1935–2025), whose nearly fifty-year tenure as curator of painting and sculpture at SAAM left an indelible mark on the field of American art. The talk will be delivered by Dr. Alexander Nemerov, Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. Following the lecture, a reception will celebrate Bill’s enduring legacy of scholarship and mentorship. Please note: the lecture will not be recorded or livestreamed.

About William H. Truettner:
William ‘Bill’ H. Truettner (1935–2025) was a trailblazing curator and scholar. Over nearly five decades at SAAM, he organized landmark exhibitions including “The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920” (1991), “Thomas Cole: Landscape into History” (1994), and “Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory” (1999). He published on the art of Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, John La Farge, the Taos School and the art of New Mexico, the colonial revival, and regionalism. His books include The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin’s Indian Gallery (1979) and Painting Indians and Building Empires in North America, 1710–1840 (2010). Beyond his own scholarship, Bill mentored more than one hundred SAAM research fellows, forging lasting connections between the museum and the academic community.

About Dr. Alexander Nemerov:
Alexander Nemerov got his start as a published author with an essay for William Truettner’s The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier: 1820-1920, the catalogue to the 1991 exhibition. The Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Stanford, Nemerov has returned to SAAM many times over the years and regards it as a home, thanks to the generosity of those he met there, foremost his mentor, Bill.