The Whistler House Museum of Art is proud to be hosting historian and curator William R. Cross presenting "Winslow Homer: American Passage"

Like his contemporaries Twain and Whitman, Winslow Homer captured the landscape of a rapidly changing country with an artist’s probing insight. His tale is one of America in all its complexity and contradiction, as he evolved and adapted to the restless spirit of invention transforming his world.

In his new book, Winslow Homer: American Passage, William R. Cross reveals the man behind the art. Described by the Wall Street Journal as "certain to be definitive," Cross' book outlines how Homer navigated issues of race, class conflict, justice, and technical innovation in his art and life. Cross will discuss the artist's background, America in the 19th century, and how Homer's life continues to shape how we view each other today.

 

 

William R. Cross is an independent scholar and consultant to art and history museums. He served as the curator of Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter’s Journey, 1869–1880, a nationally renowned 2019 exhibition on the formation of Winslow Homer as a marine painter. He is the chairman of the advisory board of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Cross and his wife, Ellen, the parents of two grown sons, live on Cape Ann, north of Boston, Massachusetts.