Claudia Kheel

FRANKLIN — Fine art consultant Claudia Kheel will present a lecture on the artistic development along Bayou Teche beginning in the late 18th century as the first in the St. Mary Landmarks’ new lecture series on May 9.

The lecture begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Grevemberg House Museum, located at 407 Sterling Road in Franklin. Admission is free and open to the public but seating is limited. Call Craig Landry at 828-2092 to reserve seating.

Kheel, a southern regional art specialist who teaches at Tulane’s School of Professional Advancement and LSU’s School of Art & Design, will discuss art and photography from the late 18th century to now. The lecture, entitled “An Enduring Tradition: Artists and Photographers of the Bayou Teche,” reviews 19th century portraiture, landscape paintings of the bayous and waterways of the Bayou Teche country, and the architecturally significant wtercolor and collage paintings of plantations by Marie Adrien Persac on the even of the Civil War.

Kheel has worked in both auction houses and museums and is a consultant at New Orleans Auction Galleries. She was previously Curator of Fine Arts at the Louisiana State Museum and earned a Master of Arts in American art history from Newcomb College at Tulane University with a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University.

The lecture also includes the WPA murals of LSU professor Conrad Albrizio and a ‘significant and talented” group of contemporary photographers and artists including Debbie Fleming Caffery, Philip Gould, George Rodrigue and Hunt Slonem who have found inspiration in southern Louisiana’s culture and landscape.

the lecture is co-sponsored by St. Mary Landmarks, the Cajun Coast Visitors and Convention Burea and historic properties specialist Peter W. Patout.