Join sculptor Chris Smith for a discussion with Bill Valerio and David Hoffman about the process of fabricating Ned Hoffman’s monumental sculpture Aspiration at Maguire Hall. Ned Hoffman’s ambition was to create monumental sculpture on a grand. public scale, and this work is an enlargement of his maquette, now with the title Aspiration, made in the early 1950s. Aspiration reaches skyward, as if beseeching the heavens and asking existential, spiritual questions. The nude figure with smooth, idealized features represents the innocent beauty into which humanity is born. Hoffman had served in WWII as a young man, and his sculpture pleas to the heavens, aspiring to understand the state of man’s plight and purpose. Hoffman (1916–1992) was a Philadelphia-born sculptor who studied with Walker Hancock at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and apprenticed in Paul Manship’s studio in New York. Celebrated with numerous awards and prizes, Hoffman worked in both France and the United States and received important private and public commissions.

Join historian Victoria Johnson to explore the life, art, and legacy of 19th-century American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church, widely regarded for creating some of the most breathtaking landscape paintings in American history. Drawing on her book Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Edwin Church Brought America to the World and the World to America, Johnson will examine how Church came to dominate nineteenth-century American painting with expansive, awe-inspiring scenes that honor the natural world. His life is intricately woven into the story of the United States, making him an especially fitting artist to celebrate in the nation’s 250th year—coinciding with the 200th anniversary of his birth. A book signing will follow the lecture.