Travel is always transformative. Whether a modest passage from one place to another or a life-altering journey, we chronicle our trips in words, images and music. In this group, we consider how women – currently and historically – document travel in diverse forms.

From the hallowed halls of a fifteenth-century Florentine palace to Ottoman harems in nineteenth-century Istanbul, over the river Nile and along the streets of Tokyo and New York, we will discuss women’s impressions of place and travel (actual and imaginary) as recorded in journals, memoirs and pictures and as markers of cultural and social transformation.

Women, Art, Travel, Transformation meets on the fourth Tuesday of the month, 5:30-7pm. Meetings will take place on Zoom.

Tues, February 23 | Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff, Rosemary Mahoney

Tues, March 23 | Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature, Mary Roberts

Tues, April 27 | Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London, Lauren Elkin

Tues, May 25 | House of Secrets: The Many Lives of a Florentine Palazzo, Allison Levy

Suzanne Scanlan is an art historian and Senior Lecturer in Theory, History of Art and Design at RISD. She received her PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University and is the author of Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de’Specchi: Religious Women and Art in 15th-century Rome. Suzanne lives in Providence and is currently writing a book on the art and travels of the American modern painter and printmaker, Esther Pressoir.