Clark Art Opening Lecture: For Shadow Visionaries

08:16AM / Tuesday, January 06, 2026Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, Jan. 10 at 11 am, the Clark Art Institute celebrates the opening of its newest exhibition Shadow Visionaries: French Artists Against the Current, 1840–70 with a free lecture.

Offering a new take on mid-nineteenth-century French art, exhibition curator Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, introduces the exhibition. The lecture takes place in the Manton Research Center auditorium.

According to a press release:

Although Realism is often seen as the dominant aesthetic of mid-nineteenth-century France, certain printmakers and photographers, called "shadow visionaries" for this project, embraced imagination, dreams, and allegory instead. Working against the grain, figures such as Victor Hugo, Charles Meryon, Rodolphe Bresdin—and a roster of early French photographers—offered an alternate vision anchored in memory, fantasy, and longing. These artists recognized the potential of prints and photographs to construct a spiritual consciousness in the art of mid-1800s France.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

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