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The traditional art academies, first founded in Europe beginning in the late 17th century and in the United States just after the year 1800, played a vital role in the lives and careers of artists over three hundred years. Because they typically made drawing the basis for all art training and taught it under fairly strict control, academies fell from favor with the advent of modern art in the twentieth century. In the late twentieth century, however, and now into the twenty-first, more artists are paying attention to craft, and the practice of careful drawing is enjoying a huge resurgence. More and more artists are producing representational work, drawn and painted in a new, classically realistic style.

In conjunction with the exhibition Powerline: The Art of Leo Dee, David Dearinger delivers an illustrated lecture about the role the formal art academy played in the development of American art. He will pay special attention to the history of one of the most important and enduring of these academies in this country: the National Academy of Design in New York, at Brooklyn College, Hunter College and for many years, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The Academy was founded in 1826, has hosted a lively art school, and has held annual exhibitions of contemporary American Art, almost without interruption, since its foundation. Dr. Dearinger reviews the history of the National Academy, discusses its important collection of American paintings and sculptures, and describes the role it played in the formation of both American artists and American art critics.

David Dearinger is Susan Morse Hilles curator of paintings and cculpture at the Boston Athenaeum. An art historian and curator, he received his PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, with a specialty in nineteenth-century American art. He taught art history in New York at Brooklyn College, Hunter College and, for many years, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Before coming to Boston, he was chief curator at the National Academy of Design in New York. He has published and lectured widely on the history of American painting and sculpture.