In connection with the current exhibition and new book By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth, a collaboration between the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Colby College Museum of Art, and the Brandywine Museum of Art, the director of the Farnsworth’s Wyeth Study Center, Dr. William L. Coleman shares new discoveries about the often overlooked designer and creative advisor who was a precondition for the paintings of her husband, the artist Andrew Wyeth. Contexts will include her first major designed environment in Pennsylvania, Brinton’s Mill, her key role in the preservation and interpretation of Cushing’s Olson House of Christina’s World fame, and her wholesale transformation of Southern, Allen, and Benner Islands, Maine. This talk will share rarely seen images of her carefully crafted landscapes, buildings, and interiors, along with the paintings they inspired.

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The Farnsworth Art Museum offers a nationally recognized collection of works from many of America’s greatest artists. It has an extensive collection of Maine works by three generations of Wyeths—N.C., Andrew, and Jamie—and in a unique partnership with the Wyeth Center for American Art and the Brandywine Museum, has access to more than 7,000 Wyeth works of art.