Tuesday, November 17, 2026 at 12 pm ET (18:00 CET)
This fall, the Saint Louis Art Museum is presenting the first exhibition to focus on landscapes as a distinct body of work essential for understanding the women of the Impressionism movement. Rather than focusing on domestic subject matter, this exhibit features the less documented outdoor spaces painted by Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and others, revealing how nature became a site of artistic innovation, identity, and quiet resistance.
Simon Kelly, SLAM’s modern and contemporary art curator, will discuss highlights from the 70 paintings, works on paper, and ceramics, in the exhibition.
Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum since 2010, has curated more than thirty exhibitions in his time at SLAM, including most recently Women Impressionists and the Land (2026-27), Matisse and the Sea (2024), Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape (2023) and Millet and Modern Art: from van Gogh to Dali (2020). Kelly has published extensively on 19th- and early 20th-century French art, particularly Barbizon and Impressionist painting, including the book, Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market (Bloomsbury, 2021). He has published numerous essays in scholarly journals and exhibition catalogues. Much of his writing has focused on the relationship between artists and cultural markets, and increasingly on ecological issues. He is currently completing his book The Barbizon Painters: An Ecological Community, 1830-1900 (Bloomsbury).